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A BEGINNER'S PSYCHOLOGY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON -CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON ■ BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



A BEGINNER'S PSYCHOLOGY 



BY 
EDWARD BRADFORD TITCHENER 



Wefo Iforfc 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1915 

All rights reserved 



-& 






t^\ 



V 



Copyright, 1915, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1915. 



Norfooorj $«B8 

J. 8. Cushing- Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 

£/0-C 



DEC 2 t^ci.A414867 ^ 



THE MEMORY OF 
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



PREFACE 

It is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of 
others more readily than in our own. — Leonardo da Vinci 

In this Beginner's Psychology I have tried to write, 
as nearly as might be, the kind of book that I should 
have found useful when I was beginning my own study 
of psychology. That was nearly thirty years ago ; 
and I read Bain, and the Mills, and Spencer, and 
Rabier, and as much of Wundt as a struggling ac- 
quaintance with German would allow. Curiously 
enough, it was a paragraph in James Mill, most un- 
psychological of psychologists, that set me on the in- 
trospective track, — though many years had to pass 
before I properly understood what had put him off it. 
A book like this would have saved me a great deal of 
labour and vexation of spirit. Nowadays, of course, 
there are many introductions to psychology, and the 
beginner has a whole library of text-books to choose 
from. Still, they are of varying merit ; and, what is 
perhaps more important, their temperamental appeal is 
diverse. 

I do not find it easy to relate this new book to the 
older Primer, — which will not be further revised. 
There is change all through ; every paragraph has 
been rewritten. The greatest change is, however, a 
shift of attitude ; I now lay less stress than I did ; 
upon knowledge and more upon point of view. The 
beginner in any science is oppressed and sometimes 



viii Preface 

disheartened by the amount he has to learn ; so many- 
men have written, and so many are writing ; the books 
say such different things, and the magazine articles are 
so upsetting ! Enviable is the senior who can reply, 
when some scientific question is on the carpet, — There 
are three main views, A's and B's and C's, and you 
will find them here and there and otherwhere ! But as 
time goes by this erstwhile beginner comes to see that 
knowledge is, after all, a matter of time itself. If he 
keeps on working, knowledge is added unto him ; and 
not only knowledge, but also what is just as valuable 
as knowledge, the power of expert assimilation ; so 
that presently, when some special point is in debate, 
he is not ashamed of the plea of ignorance. He has 
learned that one man cannot compass the full range 
of a science, and he is assured that so-many hours 
of expert attention will make him master of the new 
matter. He comes in this way not, surely, to under- 
estimate knowledge, but to be less anxious about it; 
and as that preoccupation goes, the point of view seems 
to be more and more important. Why is it that be- 
ginners in science are so often disjointed in their think- 
ing, so often superficial, unable to correlate what they 
know, logically all at sea ? There is no doubt that they 
are, whether they study physics or chemistry, biology 
or psychology. I think the main reason is that they 
have never got the scientific point of view ; they are 
taught Physics or Biology, but not Science. Hence I 
have, in this book, written an inordinately long intro- 
duction, and have kept continually harping on the 
difference between fact and meaning. I try to make 
the reader see clearly what I take Science to be. It 



Preface ix 

does not matter whether he agrees with me ; that is a 
detail ; I shall be fully satisfied if he learns to be clear 
and definite in his objections, realizes his own point of 
view, and sticks to it in working out later his own 
psychological system. Muddlement is the enemy; and 
there is a good deal of muddled thinking even in 
modern books. 

Not that I offer this little essay as a model of clear 
thought ! The ideas of current psychology and the 
words in which they find expression are still, in very 
large measure, an affair of tradition and compromise ; 
and even if a writer has fought through to clarity, — 
past experience forbids me to hope that : but even if 
one had, — a book meant for beginners may not be too 
consistently radical ; some touch must be maintained 
with the past, and some too with the multifarious 
trends of the present. There is something turbid in 
the very atmosphere of an elementary psychology (is 
the air much clearer elsewhere ?), and it is difficult to 
see things in perspective. So the critic who will soon 
be saying that the ideal text-book of psychology has 
yet to be written will be heartily in the right, even if 
he is not particularly helpful. The present work has 
its due share of the mistakes and minor contradictions 
that are inevitable to a first writing ; at many points it 
falls short of my intention, — Voeuvre qiion porte en soi 
parait tonjours plus belle que celle qiton a faite; and I 
daresay that the intention itself is not within measure^ 
able distance of the ideal. It is, nevertheless, the best 
I can do at the time ; and it is also, I repeat, the kind 
of book that I should have liked to have when I began 
psychologising. 



x Preface 

Psychological text-books usually contain a chapter on 
the physiology of the central nervous system. The 
reader will find no such chapter here ; for I hold, and 
have always held, that the student should get his ele- 
mentary knowledge of neurology, not at second hand 
from the psychologist, but at first hand from the physi- 
ologist. I have added to every chapter a list of Ques- 
tions, looking partly to increase of knowledge, but 
especially to a test of the reader's understanding of 
what he has just read. I have also added a list of 
References for further reading. It depends upon the 
maturity and general mental habit of the student 
whether these references — made as they are, in many 
cases, to authors who do not agree either with one 
another or with the text of the book — should be 
followed -up at once, or only after the text itself 
has been digested. The decision must be left to the 
instructor. My own opinion is that beginners are best 
given one thing at a time, and that the knowledge- 
questions and the references should therefore, in the 
ordinary run of teaching, be postponed until some 
'feeling' for psychology, some steadiness of psycho- 
logical attitude, has become apparent. 

I have avoided the term ' consciousness.' Experi- 
mental psychology made a serious effort to give it a 
scientific meaning ; but the attempt has failed ; the 
word is too slippery, and so is better discarded. The 
term ' introspection ' is, I have no doubt, travelling 
the same road ; and I could easily have avoided it, 
too ; but the time is, perhaps, not quite ripe. I have 
said nothing of the 'thought-element', which seems to 
me to be a psychological pretender, supported only by 



Preface xi 

the logicising tendencies of the day ; and if I am wrong 
no great harm has been done, since a description of 
this alleged elementary process, by positive characters, 
is not yet forthcoming. My references are confined to 
works available in the English language ; I think it un- 
likely that the students for whom this book is intended 
will have attained to any considerable knowledge of 
French or German. Lastly, — I believe that this is 
my last major omission, — I have referred only inci- 
dentally to the ' application ' of psychology ; for science 
is not technology, though history goes to show that any 
the least fact of science may, some day or other, find 
its sphere of practical usefulness. 

Two of my illustrations are borrowed : the swallow- 
figure on p. 138 from Professor Ebbinghaus, and the cut 
on p. 282 from Dr. A. A. Griinbaum. 

I am sorry to confess that a few of the quotations 
which head the chapters are mosaics, pieced together 
from different paragraphs of the original. Even great 
writers are, at times, more diffuse than one could wish ; 
or perhaps it would be fairer to say that they did not 
write with a view to chapter-headings. I hope, in any 
case, that no injustice has been done. 

It is a very pleasant duty to acknowledge the assist- 
ance that I have received from my Cornell colleagues, 
Prof. H. P. Weld and Drs. W. S. Foster and E. G. 
Boring, and from Dr. L. D. Boring of Wells College. 
I am indebted to all for many points of valid criticism, 
and I wish to express to all my sincere thanks for 
much self-sacrificing labour. 

I have retained the late Professor Huxley's name in 



xii Preface 

the forefront of this new primer, partly as an act of 
homage to the master in Science, — the brilliant in- 
vestigator, the fearless critic, the lucid expositor ; and 
partly, also, as a personal tribute to the man it was my 
earlier privilege to know. 

Cornell Heights, Ithaca, N.Y. 
July, 1915. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 
PSYCHOLOGY: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT DOES 



SECTION 

1. Common Sense and Science . 

2. The Subject-matter of Psychology 

3. Mind and Body 

4. The Problem of Psychology 

5. The Method of Psychology 

6. Process and Meaning 

7. The Scope of Psychology 

8. A Personal Word to the Reader 

Questions and Exercises . 
References for Further Reading 



PAGE 

1 
5 
10 
14 
18 
26 
30 
34 
37 
40 



CHAPTER II 
SENSATION 

9. Sensations from the Skin 43 

10. Kinaesthetic Sensations 45 

11. Taste and Smell 48 

12. Sensations from the Ear . . . . . . . .51 

13. Sensations from the Eye 56 

14. Organic Sensations .64 

15. Sensation and Attribute ........ 65 

16. The Intensity of Sensation . 67 

Questions and Exercises ....... 70 

References 72 



CHAPTER III 
SIMPLE IMAGE AND FEELING 



17. Simple Images . . . . 

18. Simple Feelings and Sense-feelings 

Questions and Exercises . 
References . 

xiii 



73 
79 
S7 
88 



xiv Contents 

CHAPTER IV 

ATTENTION 

SECTION PAGE 

19. The Problem of Attention 90 

20. The Development of Attention 93 

21. The Nature of Attention 99 

22. The Experimental Study of Attention 103 

23. The Nervous Correlate of Attention 106 

Questions and Exercises 110 

References . . . Ill 

CHAPTER V 
PERCEPTION AND IDEA 

24. The Problem in General 112 

25. The Analysis of Perception and Idea 114 

26. Meaning in Perception and Idea 117 

27. The Types of Perception ....... 121 

28. The Perception of Distance 125 

29. The Problem in Detail . 131 

30. The Types of Idea 138 

Questions and Exercises ....... 142 

References 143 

CHAPTER VI 
ASSOCIATION 

31. The Association of Ideas 145 

32. Associative Tendencies : Material of Study .... 149 

33. The Establishment of Associative Tendencies . . . 152 

34. The Interference and Decay of Associative Tendencies . 156 

35. The Connections of Mental Processes 159 

36. The Law of Mental Connection 162 

37. Practice, Habit, Fatigue . . 169 

Questions and Exercises 174 

References 176 

CHAPTER VII 
MEMORY AND IMAGINATION 

38. Recognition 177 

39. Direct Apprehension] 181 



Contents 



xv 



SECTION 








PAGE 


40. The Memory-idea ... 184 


41. Illusions of Recognition and Memory 








187 


42. The Pattern of Memory . 








189 


43. Mnemonics 








192 


44. The Idea of Imagination . 








194 


45. The Pattern of Imagination 








197 


Questions and Exercises . 








201 


References .... 








202 



CHAPTER VIII 
INSTINCT AND EMOTION 

46. The Nature of Instinct 203 

47. The Two Sides of Instinct .207 

48. Determining Tendencies ....... 212 

49. The Nature of Emotion 215 

50. The James-Lange Theory of Emotion 218 

51. The Expression of Emotion 222 

52. Mood, Passion, Temperament 225 

Questions and Exercises 228 

References 229 

CHAPTER IX 
ACTION 

53. The Psychology of Action 230 

54. The Typical Action 233 

55. The Reaction Experiment 236 

56. Sensory and Motor Reaction 239 

57. The Degeneration of Action: From Impulsive to Reflex . 242 

58. The Development of Action : From Impulsive to Selective 

and Volitional 246 

59. The Compound Reaction . ... . . . 252 

60. Will, Wish, and Desire ........ 255 

Questions and Exercises 259 

References . . . 260 



CHAPTER X 
THOUGHT 

61. The Nature of Thought 

62. Imaginal Processes in Thought : The Abstract Idea 



261 
263 



XVI 



Contents 



SECTION PAGE 

63. Thought and Language 267 

64. Mental Attitudes . ■ 271 

65. The Pattern of Thought 275 

66. Abstraction and Generalisation 280 

67. Comparison and Discrimination 283 

Questions and Exercises 287 

References 288 



CHAPTER XI 
SENTIMENT 



68. The Nature of Sentiment 

69. The Variety of Feeling-attitude 

70. The Forms of Sentiment 

71. The Situations and their Appeal 

72. Mood, Passion, Temperament . 

Questions and Exercises . 
References 



290 
293 

297 
300 
304 
305 
306 



CHAPTER XII 
SELF AND CONSCIOUSNESS 



73. The Concept of Self 

74. The Persistence of the Self 

75. The Self in Experience . 

76. The Snares of Language 

77. Consciousness and the Subconscious 

78. Conclusion 

Questions and Exercises . 
References .... 



307 
312 
315 
321 
323 
328 
332 
334 



APPENDIX 
DREAMING AND HYPNOSIS 

79. Sleep and Dream 335 

80. Hypnosis 341 

- References 349 

Index of Names 351 

Index of Subjects 353 



A BEGINNER'S PSYCHOLOGY 



A BEGINNER'S PSYCHOLOGY 

CHAPTER I 

Psychology : What it Is and What it Does 

It is well for a man, when he seeks a clear and unbiassed opinion 
upon some certain matter, to forget many things, and to begin to look 
at it as if he knew nothing at all before. — Li Hung Chang 

§ i. Common Sense and Science. — We live in a 
world of values. We have material standards of com- 
fort, and moral standards of conduct ; and we eat and 
drink, and dress, and house our families, and educate 
our children, and carry on our business in life, with 
these standards more or less definitely before us. We 
approve good manners; we avoid extravagance and 
display ; we aim at efficiency ; we try to be honest ; we 
should like to be cultivated. Everywhere and always 
our ordinary living implies this reference to values, to 
better and worse, desirable and undesirable, vulgar 
and refined. And that is the same thing as saying that 
our ordinary living is not scientific. It is not either 
unscientific, in the regular meaning of that word ; it 
has nothing to do with science; it is non-scientific or 
extra-scientific. For science deals, not with values, 
but with facts. There is no good or bad, sick or well, 
useful or useless, in science. When the results of science 
are taken over into everyday life, they are transformed 
into values ; the telegraph becomes a business necessity, 



2 Psychology: What it Is and What it Does 

the telephone a household convenience, the motor-car 
a means of recreation; the physician works to cure, 
the educator to fit for citizenship, the social reformer 
to correct abuses. Science itself, however, works simply 
to ascertain the truth, to discover the fact. Mr. H. G. 
Wells complains in a recent novel that no sick soul could 
find help or relief in a modern text-book of psychology. 
Of course not ! Psychology is the science of mind, not 
the source of mental comfort or improvement. A sick 
soul would not go, for that matter, to a text-book of 
theology; it would go to some proved and trusted 
friend, or to some wise and tender book written by one 
who had himself suffered. So a sick body would betake 
itself, not to the physiological laboratory, but to a 
physician's consulting room or to a hospital. 

We live, again, in a world whose centre is ourself. 
This does not necessarily mean that we are all selfish; 
a life may be very unselfish. But whether we are self- 
ish or unselfish, we live in a universe which revolves 
about the Me. Our self spreads and expands, to em- 
brace our clothes and house and books, our family and 
relations, our professional competence and connection, 
our political and religious beliefs; we find ourselves 
in all these things, and they become a part of us. A 
famine in India is a real event and takes its place in the 
world only if we are made uncomfortable when we read 
of it, or are stirred to send in a contribution, or suspect 
mismanagement somewhere and think we could have 
done better. And this, once more, is the same thing as 
saying that our ordinary living is not scientific. For 
science, which deals with facts, is on that account imper- 



§ i. Common Sense and Science 3 

sonal and disinterested. Men of science honour Dar- 
win, because they are human beings and live, like every- 
one else, in a world of values; but these same men of 
science are ready at any moment to test and criticise 
Darwin's work with the utmost rigour ; while any parts 
of the work that are solidly established pass without 
name into the structure of the science to which they 
belong. A text-book of chemistry is about as imper- 
sonal as anything can be, despite the fact that every 
observation it describes and every law it lays down was 
once somebody's personal observation or discovery, 
and so formed part of some self-centred universe. That 
personal interest is irrelevant to science. It is as 
irrelevant to psychology as to chemistry. The psy- 
chologist has a great deal to do with his own mind; 
but that is because his own mind is the most easily 
accessible part of his subject-matter; it is not in the 
least because the mind happens to be his own. He 
does not care as psychologist — though he may care 
very much as human being — whether his mind is 
superior and talented and broad and cultivated or is 
the reverse of all these things; for in the first place 
these adjectives are all adjectives of value, and he is in 
search of facts ; and secondly they are words of per- 
sonal or individual appraisement, and he is not con- 
cerned to praise or blame himself. Nor is he concerned 
to trace the motives or judge the character of other 
men. There is a common belief that the psychologist 
is an uncanny person to meet, because he is always 
studying human nature and is able to read thoughts. 
This belief belongs to the non-scientific world ; those who 



4 Psychology: What it Is and What it Does 

hold it fear that the psychologist will detect in them some 
pettiness or meanness of human nature, or will lay his 
finger on some unfounded enthusiasm or some unrea- 
soned detraction that they wish to conceal. As well 
might they think that the physicist whom they ask to 
dinner will be occupied with the surface-tension of his 
soup or the insulating properties of his mashed potato. 

If we trace the history of human thought, we find 
that the scientific attitude, as we have here described it, 
has emerged very slowly from that mixed medley of super- 
stition and knowledge and belief and practical interest 
for which we have no better name than common sense. 
How common sense has been constituted, and how science 
has gradually worked its way to an independent posi- 
tion, — these are interesting questions ; but it is plain 
that we cannot enter upon them in a primer of one 
special science. Some references for further reading 
will be given at the end of the chapter. Meanwhile, 
the important thing is to understand clearly the aims 
and limitations of science. Science aims at truth; it 
deals with facts, with the nature of things given, not 
with values or meanings or uses ; and it deals with these 
materials impersonally and disinterestedly. The student 
of science who fails to grasp the scientific point of view 
will fail also to get the perspective of a scientific text- 
book ; he will not see the wood for the trees ; and he 
will be disappointed with what science has to offer him ; 
he will want to know the use of all this knowledge, while 
science has no regard for use. The laws of psychology 
may be put to very many uses, in business, in education, 
in legal procedure, in medicine, in the ministrations of 



§ 2. The Subject-matter of Psychology 5 

religion ; but such uses are, from the psychologist's point 
of view, by-products of his science ; just as the nautical 
almanac is a by-product of astronomy, or the safety- 
match a by-product of chemistry, or the stamping-out 
of malaria a by-product of biology. These practical 
results may be immensely important for everyday life ; 
but science, in its impersonal and disinterested search 
for facts, makes no difference between one fact and 
another. 

§ 2. The Subject-matter of Psychology. — Psychology 
is the science of mind. What, then, is mind ? Every- 
boSy 7 knows that, you will say, just as everybody knows 
what is matter. Everybody knows, yes, in terms of 
common sense; but we have seen that common sense 
is not science. Besides, common sense is not articulate ; 
it cannot readily express itself ; and it is a little afraid 
of plain statements. Close this book, now, and write 
down what you take mind to be; give yourself plenty 
of time ; when you have finished, go over what you have 
written, and ask yourself if you really know what all 
the words and phrases mean, if you can define them or 
stand an examination on them ; the exercise will be 
worth while. 

Open the book again ! The exercise was worth while ; 
but it was not quite fair. For the fact is that these 
great comprehensive words that we all use and all 
understand cannot be rigorously denned; they are too 
old ; they have lived through too many changes ; they 
have gathered about them too many conflicting asso- 
ciations. They pass muster in our everyday discourse 



6 Psychology: What it Is and What it Does 

only because we take them for granted and do not 
scrutinise them too closely. The expert alone can say 
what common sense means by mind ; and even the 
expert must speak in general terms, qualifying and with 
reservations. 

It seems, however, that the prime factor in the com- 
mon-sense notion of mind is the idea of activity. We 
ascribe to mind the same sort of voluntary and pur- 
poseful activity that we ascribe to our fellow-men ; and 
we distinguish this activity from the blind necessity of 
cause and effect. We find ourselves, and those about us, 
deliberating, intending, resolving, planning, recalling, 
doubting; and we say that these and similar activities 
are activities of mind. We also find ourselves, and those 
about us, breathing, secreting, moving; but here we 
draw distinctions. Breathing, we say, is a physical 
affair, though we may hold the breath by an act of will. 
Secretion results from some physical or chemical cause ; 
only if we cry for sorrow or sweat for fear is mind influ- 
encing body. Walking and blinking may be physical 
only ; but if we turn our steps by intention into a cer- 
tain path, or blink on purpose to clear our sight, the 
physical movements become subject to the action of 
mind. 

So long as we stick to examples, all this seems straight- 
forward ; only it is not easy to decide whether mind is 
activity, or whether these various activities are activities 
of mind. On the whole, common sense leans to the 
latter view : the activities are manifestations of mind. 
Mind itself is then something immaterial, lying behind 
the manifestations. What sort of thing? Apparently, 



§ 2. The Subject-matter of Psychology 7 

another human being, an inner man that dwells within 
the outer man, an insubstantial mannikin living inside 
the head. Does that sound absurd? But it did not 
seem absurd just now to read that we ascribe to mind 
the same sort of voluntary and purposeful activity that 
we ascribe to our fellow-men ; and how could we do that 
unless mind were something like a human being? This 
inner man appears, in fact, to be the mind of common 
sense ; the inner man thinks, reflects, remembers, de- 
sires; he is influenced by the outer man, becoming 
gloomy and morose when his host cannot digest; and 
he influences the outer man, who sheds tears when his 
inmate is grieved. A curious view, when we write it 
out and think of it in cold logic; but a view that we 
should understand if we traced the growth of common 
sense from its first beginnings ; and a view of highly 
respectable antiquity. Very ancient superstitions are 
connected with the man who is seen in the eye; the 
Egyptian ka or spirit-double is a smaller copy of the 
outer man ; Greek vase-paintings show the human soul 
as a tiny human being; primitive thought has from 
time immemorial explained, and the modern savage 
still explains, the life and motion of man, or his repose 
in sleep and death, by the presence or absence of the 
little creature normally at work within him. 

Yet however natural a view like this may be, science 
can make nothing of it. For one thing, it merely pushes 
the problem a step further back. The inner man acts 
on the outer man and is acted on by him ; but who or 
what gives the inner man, in his turn, the power to 
influence and to be influenced? We must suppose 



) 



8 Psychology: What it Is and What it Does 

an endless nest of mannikins. That and other such 
arguments apart, however, the view is non-scientific be- 
cause it offers an interpretation and not a description 
of mind. The mind with which psychology deals must 
be a mind that is describable in terms of observed fact; 
otherwise it cannot form the subject-matter of a science. 
So we must start afresh, and ask what mind is, when 
mind is looked at from the scientific point of view. 

You will better understand the answer to this question 
when you have worked through the book. The answer 
will then have been given in the concrete and particular ; 
now it can be given only in the abstract and general. 
Remember that it is given, nevertheless, in terms of 
work done and results obtained; it is not an answer 
that the psychologist makes up beforehand, but one that 
he himself has been led to in the course of his attempt 
to work scientifically upon mind. In brief it is this. 

We find that the field of science has been surveyed 
from two different standpoints. Men of science have 
set out, on the one hand, to describe the world as it 
would be with man left out. The result is what we call 
physical science. The world of physics is colourless, 
toneless, neither cold nor warm; its spaces are always 
of the same extent, its times are always of the same 
duration, its mass is invariable ; it would be just what 
it is now if mankind were swept from . the face of the 
earth. For what is light in the text-books of physics? 
— a train of electromagnetic waves ; and sound is a 
vibratory motion of air or water ; and heat is a dance 
of molecules ; and all these things are independent of 
man. But men of science have tried, on the other 



§ 2. The Subject-matter of Psychology 9 

hand, to describe the world as it is in man's experience, 

as it appears with man left in; and the result of this 
endeavour is psychology. The world of psychology 
contains looks and tones and feels; it is the world of 
dark and light, of noise and silence, of rough and smooth ; 
its space is sometimes large and sometimes small, as 
everyone knows who in adult life has gone back to his 
childhood's home ; its time is sometimes short and some- 
times long; it has no invariables. It contains also the 
thoughts, emotions, memories, imaginations, volitions 
that you naturally ascribe to mind ; it contains, that is, 
so much of these things as belongs to the sphere of observ- 
able fact. It is obviously very different from the world 
of physics, though both worlds alike have been opened up 
to us by science, by the impersonal and disinterested 
search for facts. 

So we have a world of matter and a world of mind. 
The physicist, however, describes and measures the 
various phases of energy, without assuming any ma- 
terial substance in the background, any matter of which 
this energy is the manifestation. Matter, if the word 
is to be used at all, is simply the inclusive name for all 
the forms of energy. And the psychologist, in the same 
way, describes and measures — so far as he is able to 
measure — the phenomena of his world, without assum- 
ing any active or perduring mind in the background ; 
for him, mind is simply the inclusive name of all these 
phenomena. That is the first rough answer to our ' 
question. Much more must be said, if the answer is to 
be precise ; but even as it is we have travelled a long 
way from the little man living inside the head ! 






10 Psychology: What it Is and What it Does 

§ 3. Mind and Body. — The first thing to get clear 
about is the nature of the man left in the world, the man 
whose presence is necessary for psychology and unneces- 
sary for physics. Since we are talking science, this man 
will be man as science views him, and not the man of 
common sense ; he will be, that is, the organism known 
to biology as homo sapiens, and not the self-centred 
person whom we meet in the everyday world of values. 
But the human organism owes its organic character, the 
organisation of its parts into a single whole, to its ner- 
vous system. All over the body and all through the 
body are dotted sense-organs, which take up physical 
and chemical impressions from their surroundings ; 
these impressions are transmitted along nerve-fibres 
to the brain ; in the brain they are grouped, arranged, 
supplemented, arrested, modified in all sorts of ways; 
and finally, it may be after radical transformation in the 
brain, they issue along other nerve-fibres to the muscles 
and glands. The nervous system thus receives, elabo- 
rates, and emits. Moreover, there is strong evidence 
to show that the world which psychology explores 
depends for its existence upon the functioning of the 
nervous system ; or, if we prefer a stricter formula, that 
this world is correlated with the functioning of the 
nervous system. The man left in thus reduces to a ner- 
vous system ; and that is the truth of the statement, 
often met with in popular scientific writing, that the 
brain is the organ of mind. There is no organ of mind ; 
that phrase is an echo of the old-world search after the 
place of residence of the mannikin-mind, which was 
assigned variously to heart, liver, eye, brain, blood, or 



§ 3- Mind and Body n 

was supposed somehow to perfuse the whole body. 
The scientific fact is that, whenever we come upon 
mental phenomena, then we also find a functional ner- 
vous system ; we know nothing of the former apart 
from the latter ; the two orders are thus correlated. 

The fact of this correlation has been established by 
two principal lines of evidence. In the first place, we 
find all through the animal kingdom that size of brain 
and complexity of nervous system are matched by range 
and complexity of mental phenomena. The brain of man 
is, by absolute measurement, an organ of great size ; it 
is heavier than that of any other animal with the ex- 
ception of a few of the very largest (such as the elephant) ; 
and in these cases the superior weight is due, not to su- 
perior development of the elaborating part of the brain, 
but to the bulk of the receiving and emitting portions, 
which are of a size to correspond with the bulk of the 
body. The brain of man is also relatively, as compared 
with the weight of the whole body, heavier than the 
brain of any other animal with the exception of a few 
of the most highly developed small mammals (such as 
certain monkeys) ; and in these cases again the superi- 
ority depends on the bulk of the receiving and emitting 
portions of the brain, which reflect the keen sensitivity 
and muscular agility of the animal. We know, on the 
other side, that the mental life of man is richer than 
that of any other creature. Secondly, we find that dis- 
turbance of certain parts of the brain indicates a certain 
form of mental disturbance; and, conversely, that partic- 
ular forms of mental disturbance indicate disturbance 
of particular parts of the brain. One may become blind 



12 Psychology: What it Is and What it Does 

from injury to the brain as well as from such defect of 
the eye as prevents optical impressions from reaching 
the brain. 

These are the two lines of evidence. How, though, 
you may now ask, do we know anything about the dis- 
tribution of mental phenomena in the animal kingdom? 
How do we know that the lower animals live in mental 
worlds? and still more how can we say anything as to 
the nature of the phenomena that make up those worlds ? 

Consider first the case of your fellow-men. You do 
not doubt that they have experiences like your own ; you 
take them for granted, accept them instinctively as 
your kin, and are able — the better as you know them 
better — to put yourself in their place. If, however, 
you had to argue the matter with a sceptic, you would 
point to the facts of our common life. Man's family 
life, social life, civic life, national life, is based on the as- 
sumption that human experience is alike for everyone, 
and would be impossible if the assumption were falsi- 
fied by the facts. All these forms of life, for instance, 
presuppose language and laws ; and language and laws 
necessarily imply a community of experience. You 
would point, also, to likeness of physical organisation, 
likeness of sense-organs and nervous system; and you 
would point, lastly, to conduct or behaviour. When you 
feel in a certain way, you act in a certain way; your 
behaviour expresses your feeling; and when, under the 
same circumstances, a creature of like organisation reg- 
ularly acts in the same way, you have a right to infer 
that this creature has a like feeling. 

Now consider the higher animals. They possess a 



§ 3- Mind and Body 13 

physical organisation closely resembling that of man. 
They also behave in ways that appear to express feel- 
ing. If you were familiar only with their structure, 
with their sense-organs and nervous system, you would 
be ready to endow them with mind ; if you knew them 
only by their behaviour, you would reach the same con- 
clusion ; since you may know both, and may therefore 
correlate physical structure with conduct, you are able 
to form a fairly accurate idea of their mental world. 
But as you go down the scale of life, difficulties arise. 
The nervous system changes its type, and presently 
disappears ; and behaviour becomes equivocal, so that 
students of behaviour dispute whether it is still expres- 
sive or is purely mechanical. The controversy is even 
carried over from the animals to the plants ; there are 
psychologists who seriously attribute a mental life to 
plants. Be that as it may, the important point for 
us is that, as the nervous system simplifies, so does all 
available evidence indicate that the world of mind sim- 
plifies with it; and if mind extends further down the 
line of life than the nervous system, we have merely 
to change the wording of our general statement; we 
must expand it, and say that, throughout the realm of 
life, size and complexity of the nervous system, or of 
that vital mechanism which precedes the nervous system 
and anticipates its functions, are matched by range and 
complexity of mental phenomena. 

The nature of these phenomena cannot be set forth with 
any assurance. It is difficult enough to psychologise 
the life of the Australian Arunta, who is our fellow-man, 
or of the dog who has been our companion for half-a- 



14 Psychology: What it Is and What it Does 

dozen years. What shall we say of the spider, or the 
amoeba, or of sundew and eelgrass? All that we can 
do is to follow back the history of the sense-organs, from 
complex to simple, comparing as we go ; and to observe 
how the organism behaves under given circumstances, 
comparing this behaviour with that of other organisms 
higher and lower in the scale, and bringing our compari- 
son back again and again to its final term in our own 
experience. We lose a great deal when we lose the ner- 
vous system ; but life, after all, is a continuous develop- 
ment; and the disappearance of this special structure, 
though it may mean that our statements become vaguer 
and less definite, need not make our general quest hope- 
less. Honesty of purpose, and a passion for knowledge, 
and sound scientific training will carry a man further, 
even in this dark continent, than the casual enquirer 
would deem possible. 

§ 4. The Problem of Psychology. — The subject- 
matter of psychology, as we saw on p. 9, is the whole 
world as it shows itself to a scientific scrutiny with man 
left in. Or, to put the same thing in another way, psy- 
chology gives a scientific description of the whole range 
of human experience correlated with the function of 
the human nervous system. We have just learned, 
however, that there is a psychology of the lower animals, 
possibly even of plants; and we must therefore say 
that we were speaking in § 2 of the subject-matter of 
human psychology. This is the psychology that will 
occupy us in the present book. Let us now see what our 
actual task is. What have we to do, in order to get a 
scientific description of mind ? 



§ 4- The Problem of Psychology 15 

We must do what everybody does who begins to 
describe ; we must take things piecemeal. When you 
are away at the seaside, and are describing your room 
in a letter home, you tell of exposure and windows and 
carpets and furniture and pictures ; you break up the 
room into parts, and list them one by one; but you 
do not list at haphazard ; you bring your items into such 
connection as will make it easy for your readers to re- 
construct the room. The man of science does the same 
sort of thing ; he analyses, and all the while he is ana- 
lysing he has his eyes open for relations, for putting his 
elements together again as they belong. The chemist 
analyses water into oxygen and hydrogen, and acetic 
acid into carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen ; and you see 
at once that this analysis is the first step toward a 
scientific description ; for it reduces the compounds to 
their elementary components, and it shows that the 
two compounds have certain elements in common. 
But the chemist, almost in the same breath, is putting 
together again. The ordinary formulas for water and 
acetic acid, H 2 and C2H4O2, indicate that; for they 
show the number of atoms of the various elements that 
are held in the compound. Chemistry also has graphic 
formulas, of a kind that look complicated to the out- 
sider but that are really more instructive than the others, 
— formulas which show in what manner, under what 
laws, the atoms are bound together. Any good ency- 
clopaedia will give you samples. 

The psychologist, now, stands before a like problem. 
The mental world, no less than the material, comes to 
us in the gross ; mental phenomena are complex, often 



1 6 Psychology : What it Is and What it Does 

highly complex ; we must reduce them to their elements, 
we must keep analysing till we can analyse no further, 
if we are to describe them in a scientific way. And here 
too synthesis goes hand in hand with analysis. Psy- 
chology, to be sure, does not write graphic formulas ; 
but psychology has to show how its elements go to- 
gether, to discover the laws of their connection; we 
shall find that tones and colours go together in very dif- 
ferent ways. All the while that we are tearing a bit 
of our world apart, and finding its elements, we are try- 
ing to put those elements back again in their places 
and to reconstruct the original experience. 

Synthesis, unfortunately, is often very difficult; 
and you must notice that a, failure to reconstruct does not 
necessarily mean that the preceding analysis was wrong. 
A chemist may analyse a given substance into a certain 
number of elements, each one represented by a certain 
number of atoms ; yet if he puts these elements together 
again, in the right proportions, he may — perhaps be- 
cause he is now working at a different temperature — ■ 
come out with another substance of different proper- 
ties. His analysis was not therefore wrong; but his 
attempt at synthesis is a failure because he has not 
taken account of all the relevant circumstances. It may 
happen similarly in psychology that we do not know all 
the relevant circumstances ; or it may happen that we 
know them but cannot control them ; in such cases 
we cannot reconstruct. The only thing to do is then to 
make analysis its own test ; we analyse again and again ; 
and if the result is always the same, we are satisfied to 
let it stand. Children who do not know how to prove 



§ 4- The Problem of Psychology 17 

an example in arithmetic follow the same plan ; if they 
get the same answer several times over, and if their 
schoolmate gets that answer too, they are satisfied ; 
and when the work has been honestly done, the agree- 
ment is pretty good evidence that they are right. 

Notice one other point : that if you sit down to de- 
scribe, there is simply no escape from analysis. To begin 
a description is to be analysing. Well-meaning people 
sometimes shake their heads at scientific psychology; 
all this dissecting work, they say, misses the real issue ; 
it kills mind; it destroys the living, breathing reality 
of experience, and offers in its place a catalogue of dead 
facts. The mannikin again ! Of course, if mind is a 
little man inside you, you must kill him to dissect him, 
— though he nevertheless crops up again, alive and well, 
after the autopsy. The mannikin, as we have seen, 
cannot face cold logic. No, the task of science is to 
describe ; if you are to describe you must analyse ; and 
the results are every bit as real as the unanalysed expe- 
rience. Dead facts? But a fact is the most live thing 
possible ; it will survive any number of theories, and 
will still give birth to more. 

Lastly, since mental phenomena are correlated with 
the function of the nervous system, the psychologist's 
task is not complete until he has acquainted himself 
with the physiology of that system, and has worked out 
the correlation as accurately as is possible. Here, 
again, is something that you will better understand when 
you have read further in the book. For the present 
we will notice two points. First, the psychologist can 
gain access to a large part of his world only by way of 



1 8 Psychology : What it Is and What it Does 

the organs of sense ; and it is therefore important that 
he know the structure and functions of these organs 
and their relation to the brain. Secondly, a train of 
mental phenomena may be guided and directed by 
events, occurring within the nervous system, which 
themselves have no counterpart in the world of mind; 
for, while all mental phenomena are correlated with 
processes in the nervous system, not all processes in 
the nervous system have mental phenomena to corre- 
spond with them. Unless, then, the psychologist knows 
the nature of these guiding events, he will be like the 
chemist who failed to take account of temperature; 
he will lack knowledge of relevant circumstances. 
Special books upon the nervous system have been written, 
giving in outline what the student of psychology needs 
to know ; some of them are referred to at the end of the 
chapter ; but it is an advantage to have taken a prac- 
tical course in the physiology of the nervous system, and 
to be able to think in terms of neural processes. If you 
have had no such opportunity you can still learn a good 
deal from diagrams and verbal accounts ; and you may 
find comfort in the assurance that there have been emi- 
nent psychologists who knew very little about the brain. 
In fine, then, the problem of human psychology is 
threefold : to analyse mental phenomena into their 
elements, to discover the laws of mental connection, 
and to work out in detail and under all its phases the 
correlation of mind with nervous system. 

§ 5. The Method of Psychology. — Having learned 
what we have to do, let us ask what method we are to 



§ 5- The Method of Psychology 19 

follow in doing it. So far as the nervous system is con- 
cerned, it is evident that the psychologist must take 
his cue from the physiologist; indeed, this part of his 
problem makes him, for the time being, a physiologist, 
only that his real interest remains centred in mind. 
But how is it when he is attacking the other parts of 
the problem? Is there a special psychological method, 
a peculiar way of working, that he must adopt in his 
study of mental phenomena ? The answer is No : his 
method is that of science in general. 

This method may be summed up in a single word as 
observation. All scientific description, all description 
that reflects a disinterested and impersonal search for 
fact, is got by way of observation. And observation 
implies three things : a certain attitude towards phe- 
nomena, a vivid experience of the particular phenomenon 
which is the object of observation, and an adequate re- 
port of this experience in words. The relation of these 
three things will be clear if we write a formula for ob- 
servation, thus: 

psychological (vivid experience — >- full report) . 

The adjective outside the bracket shows that we take 
up a psychological attitude to the world ; in other words, 
that the world which we are exploring is (to use our catch- 
phrase again) the world with man left in. The adjective 
applies to the whole contents of the bracket ; the experi- 
ence which we are to have is mental experience, and our 
account of it is to be couched in psychological language. 
We are, then, ready for the expedience ; it comes, and 
we give it our best attention; we then express it in 



20 Psychology: What it Is and What it Does 

words ; and we try to express it fully and adequately, 
in the words that it itself points to and requires. When 
the account has been written down, and so made avail- 
able for other students, we have completed a psycholog- 
ical observation. When a number of such observations 
have been taken, we have the materials for a scientific 
description. 

Observation is by no means easy; " there is not one 
person in a hundred," said Huxley, " who can describe 
the commonest occurrence with even an approach to 
accuracy." The reasons are partly of a technical 
nature; the use of scientific method is a bit of skilled 
labour, and skilled labour presupposes training; at 
first we are likely to be careless and clumsy ; we do not 
see the need of scrupulous care, just because we do not 
know exactly what it is that we are doing. The great 
reason lies, however, in that difference between science 
and common sense to which we have already adverted ; 
common sense interprets, and science describes. Mal- 
observation is due, in the great majority of cases, to the 
ingrained tendency of the onlooker to interpret, to ex- 
plain, what he observes. How many educated men and 
women to-day believe that the full moon dissipates the 
clouds ? and how many more believe that changes of the 
moon coincide in some way with changes of the weather ? 

These remarks apply very definitely to psychology. 
The psychological observer needs technical training, first 
and foremost, because mental phenomena never stand still 
to be observed; mind is always in course, always going 
on; he must learn either to take rapid notes as the 
experience is passing, while he still remains alert to the 



§ 5- The Method of Psychology 21 

new phases as they come, or he must register the experi- 
ence phase by phase in memory, and reproduce it in 
words after it has passed. Nothing could well be more 
misleading, as a name for mental phenomena, than the 
familiar phrase ' states of consciousness ' ; for a state 
is something relatively stable and permanent. Mental 
experiences are moving, proceeding, ongoing experiences ; 
we might make up one of Lewis Carroll's portmanteau- 
words, and say that their essence is a processence. We 
shall henceforth speak of them as mental processes ; 
only remember that they are not processes of something 
or in something, like the processes of decomposition and 
fermentation; they are experiences whose very nature 
is a proceeding, a course in time. 

Secondly, the psychological observer is badly handi- 
capped by common sense, which has long drawn a distinc- 
tion between the method of psychology and the method 
of physics. Psychology is supposed to look within, 
to turn its eyes inward ; physics is supposed to look 
out upon the objective world, and to keep its eyes in 
their normal position. The method of psychology is then 
an introspection or self-contemplation, a looking-in; 
and the method of the physical sciences is an inspec- 
tion, a looking-at. The self which is thus introspected 
is, of course, judged and valued and approved and 
blamed ; we know the ear-marks of common sense. So 
we find that the hero of yesterday's novel " was not 
given to introspection. His external interests in life 
were too engrossing for him to think deeply or contin- 
uously about himself. Such a habit of mind he used 
vehemently to deprecate as morbid, egotistical. But 



22 Psychology: What it Is and What it Does 

now " — now the fateful girl is on the scene ; the hero 
begins to think about himself; and flatters himself, 
poor man, that he is turning psychologist. 

Unfortunately, neither a keen appreciation of his 
own virtue nor a rooted distrust of his own powers makes 
a man into a psychologist. Science turns its back upon 
the world of values. If, then, we are to keep the word 
introspection for the method of psychology, we must 
write the equations : 

introspection = psychological (vivid experience — >- full 

report) 
inspection = physical (vivid experience — >- full 

report) 

where the adjectives outside the brackets mean simply 
what we have already stated them to mean. When 
once the initial attitude has been taken, and the world 
to be explored has thus been determined, the methods 
are the same. The beginner in psychology will however 
find, again and again, that his common-sense self stands 
in the way of disinterested observation ; and as the 
word introspection contains a reference to this self, he 
may prefer to drop it altogether. 

So much for observation in general ! When we come 
to particulars, we find that science, wherever possible, 
has recourse to experiment. This does not mean that 
science renounces observation. For an experiment, if 
we push our definition back to fundamentals, is simply 
an observation that may be repeated, that may be isolated, 
and that may be •varied. See the advantages! Repe- 
tition gives us plenty of time for observation ; we need 



§ 5- The Method of Psychology 23 

not mind overlooking something now, since we shall 
have the opportunity of picking it up later; and we 
can go on, observing and observing, until our descrip- 
tion of the phenomenon is as complete as it can be made. 
Isolation makes our task easier; disturbing influences 
are ruled out ; our attention is not distracted ; we can 
give ourselves wholly to the matter in hand. Variation 
— the substituting of one factor for another in succes- 
sive observations, or the emphasising in one observa- 
tion of a factor that was obscure in another — helps 
us to clear up doubtful points ; to distinguish what is 
universal from what is only accidental in the phenomenon 
we are observing; and to bring this phenomenon into 
relation with kindred phenomena. Repetition saves 
hurry and worry; isolation prevents distraction; variation 
keeps us from jumping at conclusions. These are the 
advantages of experiment; and all experiments, in 
physics, in chemistry, in biology, everywhere, fall under 
this definition. 

Psychology needs the experimental method for both 
the reasons noted above : because the observed phe- 
nomena are elusive and slippery processes, and because 
the observer is warped and biassed by common sense. 
We may therefore show by an example how psycholog- 
ical experiment is possible. Suppose that we wish to 
find out how a printed word is perceived, — whether 
we read it letter by letter, or take in its form as a whole, 
or take in certain letters clearly and the general form 
vaguely. We first prepare our material. We print 
upon cards, or photograph upon lantern slides, a large 
number of words. We employ different printing types ; 



24 Psychology : What it Is and What it Does 

different groups of letters ; different lengths of words ; 
single words and groups of words ; words properly- 
spelled, and words altered by mutilation or omission of 
particular letters at different parts of the word. Every 
one of these classes of stimuli, as the words may be tech- 
nically called, is represented by a number of cards or 
slides. The stimuli are mixed in haphazard order, and 
are thrown upon the screen by a reflectoscope or projec- 
tion lantern in an otherwise dark room; a pneumatic 
shutter before the lantern makes it possible to show them 
for a brief time, say, a fifth of a second. All this appa- 
ratus is put in the charge of an experimenter. When 
the material is ready, and the whole arrangement works 
properly, an observer is called in. He works for a lim- 
ited time, at the same hour every day, and only after a 
certain time has been allowed for his eyes to accustom 
themselves to the dark. The stimuli are presented at 
regular intervals. The observer reports what he per- 
ceives at every exposure of a stimulus, and the experi- 
menter writes down what he says. 

It is plain, now, that these observations may be 
repeated. For one thing, there is a group of like cards 
in every class; and for another thing, the observer 
himself (since he works every day at the same time and 
under the same circumstances) is a fairly constant quan- 
tity. Besides, the observations may also be made by 
other observers, in other laboratories, under precisely 
the same circumstances ; they may be repeated in just 
the same sense that a physical observation may be 
repeated. Secondly, the observations are isolated; 
they are made in a dark and quiet room, free from 



§ 5- The Method of Psychology 25 

outside disturbance. No doubt, the observer's thoughts 
may wander in the intervals between observations. For 
this reason, the experimenter gives a preconcerted sig- 
nal, or calls out Now, a second or two before a word is 
shown; this signal warns the observer to pull himself 
together and to free himself from any such distractions. 
Thirdly, the observations are varied ; for we employ all 
sorts of words, both normally printed and variously 
changed ; and the stimuli may be presented for various 
lengths of time. Here, then, is a true psychological 
experiment ; and if many observers, after many obser- 
vations, give the same account of their perceptive 
experience, that account may stand as established psy- 
chological fact. 

Not all mental phenomena can be subjected to experi- 
ment so neatly as this particular perception; and the 
psychologist must still fall back, more often than he 
likes, upon casual observation or imperfect experiments. 
The reason is that psychology has only recently become 
an experimental science. Common-sense psychology is 
very old : we have a complete treatise in Greek from 
the hand of Aristotle, and a text-book in Pali compiled 
by some Buddhist sage, both dating from the fourth 
century B.C. But while it is in the sixteenth century 
of our era that the physicist abandons scholastic specu- 
lation and begins to study nature by experiment, it is 
not till the last quarter of the nineteenth that the psy- 
chologist follows suit. In or about the year 1875 the 
late Professor James, then instructor in anatomy and 
physiology at Harvard, had a single room devoted to 
psychological apparatus and experiments ; and in 1879 



26 Psychology: What it Is and What it Does 

Professor Wundt opened at the University of Leipsic, 
in a very modest way, the laboratory which has since 
become the most famous in the world. It is true that 
experiments in psychology had been made by individ- 
uals long before laboratories were thought of ; but the 
same thing is true of physics and chemistry; and we 
may remember, when we come to the weak places of 
psychological exposition, that laboratory research and 
instruction are not yet fifty years old. 

§ 6. Process and Meaning. — Science, we said on 
p. 4, does not deal with values or meanings or uses, 
but only with facts ; and we have just seen how words, 
which in everyday life are practically all meaning, may 
be made the objects of psychological experiment. Still, 
in their case, after all, we were simply ignoring meaning ; 
so far as the observer was able to read words at all 
from the stimuli flashed on the screen, he read words 
which had a meaning, and a meaning that the experi- 
menter might have discovered if he had been interested 
in it. We have not offered any evidence that mental 
processes are not intrinsically meaningful, that mean- 
ing is not an essential aspect of their nature; we have 
just assumed that they may be treated, scientifically, 
as bare facts. Let us now see whether meaning is 
essential to them or not. There are several heads of 
evidence. 

First, meaning may be stripped from the mental process 
to which it normally belongs. Repeat aloud some word 
— the first that occurs to you ; house, for instance — 
over and over again ; presently the sound of the word 



§ 6. Process and Meaning 27 

becomes meaningless and blank; you are puzzled and 
a morsel frightened as you hear it. The same loss of 
meaning is observed in pathological cases ; there are 
patients who can hear and see words as plainly as 
you can, but who are unable to understand what they 
hear and see; the bare perception is there, but it is 
bereft of its meaning. 

Secondly, a meaningless experience may take on a 
meaning. A friend shows you a card, upon which is 
scrawled a tangle of lines ; you cannot make head or 
tail of it. He tells you to look at the back ; you see the 
date there written ; you think at once of a great earth- 
quake ; you realise that the scrawl is a seismographic 
record.. Meaning has thus been attached or added to 
a bare perception. Similarly, in learning a new script 
or a new language, you attach meaning to what was at 
first meaningless. The first experiments in the teaching 
of the blind deaf-mute Laura Bridgman " were made by 
pasting upon several common articles, such as keys, 
spoon, knives, and the like, little paper labels on which 
the name of the article had been printed in raised let- 
ters." These meaningless feels, as they were at the 
outset, came presently to mean the objects with which 
the teacher had connected them. 

Thirdly, an experience and its meaning may be dis- 
joined in time. We often ask, in conversation, to have 
a remark repeated; we have heard without under- 
standing ; but before the speaker has time to repeat, 
we ourselves begin to reply ; the meaning has come, but 
comes after an appreciable interval. So we may have 
to wait a little while before we can recall the meaning 



28 Psychology : What it Is and What it Does 

of some foreign word that nevertheless, as we say, we 
know perfectly well. This disjunction is also found 
in pathological cases. A patient " with slight stupor 
could not answer questions except very slowly. She 
was constantly saying : c I see everything, but I don't 
know anything.' It took her five minutes to tell the 
time when she was shown a clock." 

Here the experience comes first, and the meaning 
follows after. This order may, however, be reversed. 
You want to know the German of the proverb ' Out of 
the frying pan into the fire ' ; you have the meaning, 
but you cannot think of the words ; and presently the 
words leap to mind, aus dem Regen in die Traufe, out 
of the rain into the roof-drip. Or you know what you 
want to say, but you cannot get this meaning into 
words. An author who is very definitely aware of the 
meaning he wishes to convey to his reader may never- 
theless have to write a paragraph ten or twenty times 
over before the sight and sound of his own words give 
back that meaning to himself. Or again, you may an- 
ticipate, in listening to a lecture, the meaning of what the 
lecturer is going to say, and yet you may be surprised 
at the words which he actually uses. 

Fourthly, one and the same experience may have sev- 
eral meanings. Any dictionary is a proof of that! 
A lecturer may demonstrate the fact to a class by draw- 
ing on the blackboard, line by line, the figure of some such 
thing as, for instance, a desk-telephone. As the draw- 
ing proceeds, the lines may mean a pump, or a student 
lamp, or an electric portable, or a railway semaphore, 
or a jack, or various other things. In this case, to 



§ 6. Process and Meaning 29 

be sure, a single meaning is given when the drawing is 
complete ; but there are plenty of experiences — a 
bit of bad handwriting, a distant object, an obscure patch 
in a painting — that leave us permanently unable to 
decide among several meanings. How often do we 
worry over a chance remark : it seemed to mean this, 
but could it have meant that, or is it possible that it 
really meant the other? 

Fifthly, one and the same meaning may attach to sev- 
eral experiences. You walk into a room, and there see 
a table ; you go into the same room in the dark and 
hurt yourself, and you complain that you ran against 
the table ; you hear a noise overhead, and wish that the 
maid would not drag that table about. Here the mean- 
ing of a particular table is carried by three modes of 
perceptive experience. In certain forms of mental dis- 
order one obsessing meaning colours all the experiences 
of the daily life. The patient " scents poison and 
treachery on all sides. He has slowly convinced him- 
self by numerous tests in little things that he is no longer 
liked. The workmen are refractory and disobedient 
with him more than with anyone else. His chiefs and 
his fellows play malicious tricks upon him. His food 
tastes differently, and does not agree with him. When 
he goes to another town, it is plain that his enemies have 
anticipated him by writing letters to his injury." 
Every experience that this man has means persecution. 

Sixthly, meaning and mental process are not covariants. 
Richness and fullness of experience do not necessarily 
correspond with wealth of meaning ; you may, in fact, 
be bewildered, and fail to find a meaning just because 



30 Psychology: What it Is and What it Does 

there is so much material to take in ; your first hearing 
of a Wagner opera gave you, probably, more sound than 
sense. Conversely, poverty of experience does not 
necessarily mean loss or reduction of meaning; if that 
were the case, we could not pack so much meaning into 
such little things as words. 

All this evidence would be greatly strengthened if 
we went beyond the limits of individual experience, and 
compared man with man, profession with profession, 
race with race, age with age. What is meaningless to 
me might be full of meaning to you ; the same land- 
scape yields different meanings to the geologist and the 
farmer; a protruded tongue means insult here, but 
politeness in Thibet ; the art of the telegrapher would 
have spelled black magic a few centuries ago. Enough 
has perhaps been said to give plausibility, at any rate, 
to the statement that mental processes do not intrin- 
sically mean, that meaning is not a constituent part 
of their nature; and that may suffice for the present; 
we shall come back again to meaning later. Value and 
use need hardly be discussed ; they are, far more clearly 
than meaning, additional to (and detachable from) 
experience. If, however, the reader thinks that the 
point should be worked out in their case also, he may put 
them through the same sort of examination as that to 
which we have just subjected meaning; evidence will 
at once be forthcoming. 

§ 7. The Scope of Psychology. — Science, like the 
Elephant's Child in the story, is full of an insatiable 
curiosity. Just as the physicist reaches out, analysing 



§ 7- The Scope of Psychology 31 

and measuring, to the farthest limits of the stellar uni- 
verse, so does the psychologist seek to explore every 
nook and corner of the world of mind; nay more, he 
will follow after a mere suspicion of mind; we have 
seen him trying to psychologise the plants. The result 
is a vast number of books and monographs and articles 
on psychology, written by men and women of very differ- 
ent interests, knowledge and training ; for science does 
not advance on an ordered front, but still depends largely 
on individual initiative. A high authority on the Middle 
Ages has said that one mortal life would hardly suffice 
for the reading of a moderate part of mediaeval Latin ; 
and the psychologist must recognise, whether with pride 
or with despair, that one lifetime is hardly enough for 
the mastery of even a single limited field of psychology. 
The student has to get clear on general principles, and 
then to resign himself to work intensively upon some 
special aspect of the subject-matter, — keeping as 
closely as he may in touch with his fellow-workers, and 
aiming to see his own labours in a just perspective, 
but realising that psychology as a whole is beyond his 
individual compass. 

Does that sound exaggerated? Let us then attempt 
a rough classification ! We begin with the psychology 
of the normal mind. Under this heading we have to 
distinguish (1) human psychology. Human psychol- 
ogy may be general, the psychology of the adult civil- 
ised man, which forms the principal topic of the text- 
books of psychology; special, the psychology of the 
human mind at some other stage of individual develop- 
ment : infancy, childhood, adolescence, senility; dif- 



32 Psychology: What it Is and What it Does 

ferential, the study of the differences between individual 
minds ; or genetic, the study of the development of mind 
from childhood to manhood, and its gradual decay in 
old age. (2) Animal psychology may be subdivided, 
in the same way, into general, special, differential and 
genetic psychology. (3) Plant psychology is still in 
its first beginnings ; but many students are taking the 
subject seriously. (4) Comparative psychology is the 
comparative study, either of various types of animal 
mind, or of the minds of plants, animals and man. It, 
again, may be general, special or genetic. 

All these psychologies deal with the individual mind. 
There is also a collective psychology; and, though its 
divisions are not yet sharply marked off from one 
another, we may distinguish (5) social psychology, 
which includes the study of what is called the social 
consciousness, and also the scientific study of the prod- 
ucts of the collective mind : language, law and custom, 
myth and religion ; (6) ethnic psychology, the differen- 
tial psychology of nations or races ; and (7) class psy- 
chology, the differential psychology of classes or profes- 
sions. 

Turn now to the psychology of the abnormal mind. 
Here we find, under the heading of individual psy- 
chology, (8) the psychology of deficient and exceptional 
minds; of blind deaf-mutism, of genius, of the subnormal 
and the supernormal child ; (9) the psychology of tempo- 
rary mental derangement; of dream, of hypnosis, of in- 
toxications, of occasional hallucination and illusion ; and 
(10) the psychology of permanent mental disorder, of 
the chronic derangements of insanity. We may also 



§ 7- The Scope of Psychology 33 

study (11) the psychology of temporary derangement 
of the collective mind, that is, of the manias or mental 
epidemics that sometimes sweep society: the mediae- 
val dance-manias, unmotived panics, outbursts of super- 
stition, of religious persecution. 

If we proceed further, from psychology proper to 
psychotechnics, or to what is ordinarily termed applied 
psychology, we have the great departments of (12) 
educational psychology, (13) medical psychology or 
psychotherapeutics, (14) juristic psychology, or the 
psychology of evidence and testimony, and (15) eco- 
nomic psychology, which includes such things as voca- 
tional psychology and the psychology of advertising. 

You need not ascribe any special importance to this 
classification; still less need you memorise it. The 
various topics might very likely be better arranged, 
and the list is by no means complete. Realise, however, 
that every term in the list has its text-books and trea- 
tises, its manuals and monographs, and very likely its 
magazine or magazines ; realise again that, although 
the emphasis varies in the different countries, the list 
might be filled out not alone in English, but in all the 
chief European tongues ; and remember, lastly, that 
some of the headings have a very long history, and a 
correspondingly long series of printed works over and 
above those that represent current knowledge. You 
then get a glimmering of the range and scope of psy- 
chology. It is true, of course, that much of what has 
been printed is out of date, or inaccurate, or superficial, 
or prejudiced, and for these or like reasons may safely 
be scrapped. Yet it all has to be sifted. 



34 Psychology : What it Is and What it Does 

The mere bulk of psychological material would be less 
formidable if every writer adopted the same principles and 
wrote from the same point of view; but that is hardly to be 
expected. Psychology has always been exposed to the 
infection of common sense ; it has only recently turned 
to scientific methods ; and when the time came for it 
to take its place among the sciences, there was naturally 
difference of opinion regarding the standpoint it should 
assume, the procedure it should follow, the model it 
should seek to copy. Where such differences of opinion 
obtain, the best way to begin your study is to master 
one system thoroughly ; your ideas are thus made con- 
sistent and your knowledge receives an orderly arrange- 
ment ; then, as you read further, you can use this system 
as a touch-stone whereby to test new ideas and to ar- 
range new knowledge ; and if the new ideas seem prefer- 
able to the old, or if the old framework breaks down under 
the new knowledge, you can alter your own system ac- 
cordingly. If you begin, on the contrary, by studying 
a number of works abreast, you are liable to become 
confused. And it is better to be wrong than to be 
muddled ; for truth, as Bacon said, emerges more 
quickly from error than from confusion. 

§ 8. A Personal Word to the Reader. — These intro- 
ductory sections are not easy. The only way to make 
them easy would be, as an Irishman might say, to leave 
the difficult things out; but then you would come to 
the later chapters, where we study mental phenomena 
in the concrete, with all sorts of prepossessions and mis- 
understandings ; psychology would be one long difn- 



§ 8. A Personal Word to the Reader 35 

culty instead of being, as it henceforth ought to be, a 
bit of straight sailing. 

So you must face the initial difficulty and overcome 
it. Indeed, you must do more than merely understand. 
The author's undergraduates who break down in a 
preliminary examination always explain that they fol- 
lowed the lectures perfectly, and thought they under- 
stood the text-book, but that they were somehow un- 
able to put things properly in their own words. The 
author's small daughter who comes home with an elab- 
orate example in compound interest explains, in the 
same manner, that she thoroughly understood the rule 
when She explained it, but that she can't now see just 
how to go to work for herself. It may be that these 
excuses are not wholly reliable ; they bear, at any rate, 
upon the present point. You must not only understand 
what you read as you read it ; you must exercise your 
thought upon what you have read; you must be able 
to explain the paragraphs, in your own words, to others ; 
you must find instances and illustrations for yourself; 
you must make the substance of the paragraphs a part 
of your habitual mental furniture ; you must note 
how the old ways of thinking crop up to mislead you, 
and must correct and criticise the natural man. In a 
word, just as you practise your way into a language by 
reading, translating, writing, speaking ; or just as you 
practise your way into algebra by doing exercise after 
exercise until the rule seems to be part of you and applies 
itself of its own accord ; so must you keep practising 
your psychology until it becomes instinctive. You 
will gain some help by answering the appended ques- 



36 Psychology: What it Is and What it Does 

tions; but after the book has done all that it can for 
you, the real induction into psychology remains to do 
for yourself. 

Some of the questions are concerned with forms of 
expression; and you should take these very seriously, 
since language will be one of your greatest stumbling- 
blocks. Language is older than science, and has devel- 
oped under pressure of practical needs. Hence the 
phrases that come most naturally to your lips may em- 
body a view of the world, or an attitude toward experi- 
ence, that is totally foreign to the scientific context. 
If a visitor from Mars heard us all talking about the 
sunset, what would he think of our knowledge of the 
heavenly bodies? Yet we cannot escape from lan- 
guage ; and if Newton could express his ideas in Latin, 
we ought to be able to express ours in English. It is a 
good plan, at the start, to have your technical definitions 
always at hand, and to try the effect of substituting these 
definitions for the words that you have been using; if 
the resulting clumsiness makes sense, you may let your 
first expressions pass ; but if not, you should try again. 

You will notice, as you read on in the book, that back 
references become numerous. Be advised to look these 
references up ! They send you, in every case, to a 
particular page, so that their finding is easy, and you 
can refresh your memory without any great loss of time ; 
though, for that matter, it will do no harm to glance 
over the section in which they occur. If you, on your 
part, want to refer to some past discussion, consult the 
index ; it has been made fairly full, and is meant to be 
used. 



Questions and Exercises 37 

Questions and Exercises 

Many of the books to which you will be referred, now and 
later, have appeared in numerous editions, library and 
popular, English and American. The references are made so 
complete that you will easily find the corresponding passages 
in editions other than those used by the author. 

(1) Discuss the following definitions of science. If you 
have access to the books, read the passages in which the defi- 
nitions occur ; if not, do the best you can with your present 
knowledge. Try to see a reason even for the definitions 
that you cannot accept. 

(a) Science is perfected common sense (Huxley). The 
definition accords with the view of Spencer that science and 
ordinary knowledge are allied in nature, and that the one is 
but a perfected and extended form of the other. What is 
there in the common interests of these two men, or in the 
period in which they lived, to account for such a definition? 

(b) Reduced to its lowest terms, science is the observation 
of phenomena and the colligation of the results of observation 
into groups (Hill). 

(c) When may any subject be said to enter the scientific 
stage? I suppose when the facts of it begin to resolve them- 
selves into groups ; when phenomena are no longer isolated 
experiences, but appear in connection and order; when, 
after certain antecedents, certain consequents are uniformly 
seen to follow; when facts enough have been collected to 
furnish a basis for conjectural explanation, and when con- 
jectures have so far ceased to be utterly vague, that it is 
possible in some degree to foresee the future by the help of 
them (Froude). 

(d) Mechanics is the science of motion; and its problem 
is to describe the motions that occur in nature completely 
and in the simplest way (Kirchhoff). Can this definition of 
mechanics be generalised, so that it applies to science at 
large ? 



38 Psychology : What it Is and What it Does 

T. H. Huxley, Science Primers : Introductory, 1880, 18 f . ; H. Spencer, 
The Genesis of Science, in Essays, ii., 1891, 8; A. Hill, Introduction to 
Science, 1900, 3 ; J. A. Froude, The Science of History, in Short Studies 
on Great Subjects, First Series, i., 1901, 13 f . ; G. R. Kirchhoff, Vorle- 
sungen liber mathematische Physik : Mechanik, 1883, 1. 

(2) Helmholtz tells us that whoever, in the pursuit of 
science, seeks after immediately practical utility, may 
generally rest assured that he will seek in vain ; and Clifford 
asserts that the most useful parts of science have been in- 
vestigated for the sake of truth, and not for their usefulness. 
Yet Pearson holds that one of the claims of science to our 
support is the increased comfort that it adds to practical life. 
How do you reconcile these statements? 

H. von Helmholtz, On the Relation of Natural Science to General 
Science, in Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, i., 1904, 25 ; W. K. 
Clifford, On Some of the Conditions of Mental Development, in Lectures 
and Essays, i., 1879, io 4> K. Pearson, The Grammar of Science, ch. i., 
1900, 29 f., 37. 

(3) Discuss the following definitions of psychology : 

(a) The science which describes and explains the phe- 
nomena of consciousness, as such (Ladd). 

(b) The science of behaviour (Pillsbury). 

(c) The science of individual experience (Ward). 

(d) The positive science of mental process (Stout). 

G. T. Ladd, Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, 1894, 1 ; W. B. 
Pillsbury, The Essentials of Psychology, 191 1, 5; J. Ward, Psychology, 
in Encyclopaedia Britannica, xxii., 191 1, 548; G. F. Stout, Analytic 
Psychology, i., 1896, 1. 

(4) Can you bring the following series of statements into 
relation, and show that they illustrate natural (even neces- 
sary) stages in the history of human thought? (Note the 
phrasing in every case !) 

(a) The savage thinker seems to have taken for granted, as 
a matter of course, the ordinary operations of his own mind. 



Questions and Exercises 39 

It hardly occurred to him to think about the machinery 
of thinking (Tylor). 

(b) The modern mind is, what the ancient mind was not, 
brooding and self-conscious; and its meditative self-con- 
sciousness has discovered depths in the human soul which 
the Greeks and Romans did not dream of, and would not 
have understood (Mill). 

(c) When to save his own soul became man's first business, 
he must needs know that soul, must study, must examine it. 
Prescribed as a duty, introspection became at once a main 
characteristic of religious life (Burr). 

(d) There is nothing more interesting to the ordinary in- 
dividual than the workings of his own mind. This interest 
alone would justify the existence of the science [of psychology] 
(Pillsbury). 

(e) If we could say in English ' it thinks ', as we say ' it 
rains ' Or ' it blows ', we should be stating the fact most simply 
and with the minimum of assumption (James). 

E. B. Tylor, Animism, in Primitive Culture, i., 1891, 497 ; W. Knight, 
Rectorial Addresses delivered at the University of St. Andrews, 1863- 
1893 : J. S. Mill, 1894, 38; A. R. Burr, Religious Confession and Confes- 
sants, 1914, 86; W. B. Pillsbury, op. cit., 5; W. James, The Principles 
of Psychology, i., 1890, 224 f. 

(5) What is the earliest notion of your own mind that you 
can recall? 

(6) Four newspapers describe the same gown as gold 
brocade, white silk, light mauve, and sea-green with cream or 
ivory sheen on it. How could this difference of report 
have arisen? 

(7) Newton is said to have discovered the law of gravita- 
tion by observing the fall of an apple from a bough. Was 
this a simple observation, or could it be said to have anything 
of the experiment about it? 

(8) What are the characteristics of a good observer ? of a 
good experimenter ? 



4o Psychology: What it Is and What it Does 

(9) The older psychologies speak, in technical terms, 
not of mental processes but of powers, faculties, capacities 
of the mind. What view of mind do these expressions 
imply? 

(10) Rousseau remarked that definitions would be all 
very well if we did not use words to make them ; les definitions 
pourraient etre bonnes si Von n'employait pas des mots pour 
les faire (CEuvres completes de J. J. Rousseau : Emile, tome 
L, 1823, livre ii., 160). Illustrate this remark by reference 
to psychology. 

(11) Try to describe your experience on some occasion 
which leads you to say: (a) I have made up my mind; 
(b) I have half a mind to do so-and-so ; (c) That puts me in 
mind of so-and-so. Try to get down to the bare facts; it 
will be difficult; but try again and again, and do not be 
satisfied to report meanings. 

/ (12) Describe your fountain-pen from the points of view 
of common sense, of physics, and of psychology. Do not 
attempt too much detail, but get the differences in point 
of view clearly on paper. / 



References for Further Reading 

§ 1. Some general references have already been given ; 
add W. Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, 3d ed., 
1857. The book is out of date, but still useful. For 
science in the Middle Ages, see H. O. Taylor, The Mediaeval 
Mind, 2d ed., 1914 (references in index). For the genesis 
of science, consult Tylor, as cited above ; J. G. Frazer, 
Balder the Beautiful, 1913, 304 ff. ; all the volumes of 
The Golden Bough are instructive. For an object-lesson 
in scientific thinking take Ff. Spencer, The Study of Soci- 
ology, 9th ed., 1880 (also no. 5 of International Scientific 
Series). 

§ 2. Tylor, as above; J. G. Frazer, Taboo and the Perils 
of the Soul, 1911, 26 ff. ; E. B. Titchener, Psychology: 



References for Further Reading 41 

Science or Technology? in Popular Science Monthly, 
lxxxiv., 1914, 39 ff. ; J. Ward, Psychology, in Encyclopaedia 
Britannica, xxii., 191 1, 547 f. 

§ 3. W. McDougall, Physiological Psychology, 1905 ; 
W. Wundt, Principles of Physiological Psychology, i., 1904, 
1 ff., 27 ff., 280 ff..; R. M. Yerkes, Animal Psychology and 
Criteria of the Psychic, in Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, 
and Scientific Methods, ii., 1905, 141 ff. ; M. F. Washburn, 
The Animal Mind, 1908; A. W. Yerkes, Mind in Plants, in 
The Atlantic Monthly, Novr. 1914, 634 ff. ; J. B. Watson, 
Behaviour, An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, 
1914. 

§ 4. O. Kuelpe, Introduction to Philosophy, 1897, 55 ff. ; 
Wundt, as above ; G. T. Ladd and R. S. Woodworth, Ele- 
ments of Physiological Psychology, 191 1 ; E. W. Fiske, An 
Elementary Study of the Brain, 1913 ; K. Dunlap, An 
Outline of Psychobiology, 1914. 

§ 5. W. S. Jevons, The Principles of Science, 1900, bk. iv., 
chs. xviii., xix. ; E. B. Titchener, Prolegomena to a Study of 
Introspection, in American Journal of Psychology, xxiii., 
1912, 427 ff. ; O. Kuelpe, Outlines of Psychology, 1909, 
§ 2 ; W. A. Hammond, Aristotle's Psychology, 1902 ; C. A. 
F. Rhys Davids, A Buddhist Manual of Psychological 
Ethics, 1900. 

§ 6. M. Howe and F. H. Hall, Laura Bridgman, 1903, 
49 f. ; G. Stoerring, Mental Pathology in its Relation to 
Normal Psychology, 1907 (the quotations from this work 
are sometimes condensed in the text) ; S. I. Franz, Hand- 
book of Mental Examination Methods, 191 2, 68, 80. 

§ 7. Add, as typical, to works already cited : W. Preyer, 
The Mind of the Child, 1888-9 (human special) ; J. M. Bald- 
win, Mental Development in the Child and the Race, 1906 
(human genetic) ; id., Social and Ethical Interpretations in 
Mental Development, 1906 (social) ; G. Le Bon, The Psy- 
chology of Peoples, 1898 (ethnic) ; A. Moll, Hypnotism, 1891 
(derangement); G. Le Bon, The Crowd, 1910; J. Jastrow, 



42 Psychology : What it Is and What it Does 

Fact and Fable in Psychology, 1900 (collective derange- 
ment) ; E. L. Thorndike, The Principles of Teaching Based 
on Psychology, 1906 ; H. Miinsterberg, Psychology, General 
and Applied, 1914. For the history of psychology, see O. 
Klemm, A History of Psychology, 1914; M. Dessoir, Out- 
lines of the History of Psychology, 191 2. 



CHAPTER II 

Sensation 

Now that these points have been determined, let us proceed to a 
general discussion of the whole subject of Sensation. — Aristotle 

§ 9. Sensations from the Skin. — The skin is part 
of our organic birthright. One of the great differences 
between the living and the not-living lies in the posses- 
sion of a skin ; stone and iron weather and rust, but 
even the naked amoeba has its ectosarc, and flowers of 
tan their plasmoderm. The skin is also the oldest of 
the sense-organs, and the mother of all the rest; how 
old, we dare hardly guess ; but we know that the chem- 
ical elements which make up living tissue took form 
early in the history of our planet, earlier than the heavy 
metals. So it is natural to begin our survey of sensa- 
tions by questioning the skin. 

The skin is a shifty witness ; and to get positive an- 
swers, we must literally cross-examine it; we must go 
over its surface point by point and line by line, with all 
sorts of mechanical and thermal and electrical and 
chemical stimuli. The outcome is a little surprising ; 
we rind only four sensations, pressure, cold, warmth 
and pain. The organs of these sensations are dotted 
in a sort of irregular mosaic all over the skin, and the 
intervening spaces are insensitive. The organs of press- 
ure, distributed over about 95 % of the bodily surface, 

43 



44 Sensation 

are nerve-skeins twined about the roots of the hairs ; 
on the hairless areas of the body, we find the nerve-skein 
by itself. The organ of pain is probably a little brush- 
like bunch of nerve-fibrils just below the epidermis. 
The organs of warmth and cold are certainly distinct; 
the sensations are not degrees of one sensation, as the 
thermometer might lead us to suppose ; but the precise 
nature of their nerve-endings has not yet been made 
out. 

You may easily find pressure spots by fastening a 
short horsehair with sealing-wax at right angles to the 
end of a match, and applying the horsehair point to the 
back of the hand above a hair-bulb, that is, just to wind- 
ward of the issuing hair ; dot the horsehair about, here 
and there, till the sensation flashes up. You may find 
cold spots by passing the blunt point of a lead pencil 
slowly across the closed eyelid. Warm spots are more 
difficult to demonstrate. For pain, take the shaft of a 
pin loosely between finger and thumb of the right hand, 
and bring the point down sharply on the back of the 
left hand ; you get two sensations ; the first is a pressure, 
the second — - which pricks or stings — is a pain. 

As a rule, these organs are not stimulated separately 
but in groups. Itch, for instance, is due to the light 
stimulation of a field of pain-endings, and superficial 
tickle to that of a field of pressure-organs. The experi- 
ence of heat, curiously enough, is a blend of warmth 
and cold ; there are no heat spots. It may be observed 
in this way : if you apply a surface of increasing warmth 
to a region of the skin which has both cold and warm 
spots, you feel for some time only the warmth ; but 



§ io. Kinesthetic Sensations 45 

when the stimulus has reached a certain temperature, 
the cold spots, suddenly and paradoxically, flash out 
their sensations of cold ; and the blend of warmth and 
of paradoxical cold is felt as heat. Cement a smooth 
copper coin to a handle, and apply it at gradually in- 
creasing temperature to the middle of the forehead just 
under the hair; you will presently find the heat. Or if 
you cannot do that, note the shiver of cold when you 
next step into an overhot bath. 

When we compare these results with the show that 
the skin makes as a sense-organ in everyday life, we 
can hardly help bringing against it the charge of dis- 
honesty. The pressure spots give us tickle, contact or 
light pressure, and pressure proper; the pain spots, 
itch, prick or sting, and pain proper. The cold spots 
give cold and cool, the warm spots lukewarm and warm ; 
cold and warm spots together give heat ; cold and pain 
give biting cold ; cold and warm and pain give burning 
or scalding heat ; and that is all. Yet the skin pre- 
tends to tell us of hard and soft, wet and dry, light and 
heavy, rough and smooth, yielding and resistant, sharp 
and blunt, clammy and greasy, oily and sticky, stiff and 
elastic, and so on. Where do we get all these experi- 
ences ? 

§ 10. Kinesthetic Sensations. — We get them, for 
the most part, from the cooperation with the skin 
of certain deeper-lying tissues. Psychologists have long 
suspected the existence of a muscle sense. We now 
know that sensations are derived, not only from the 
muscles, but also from the tendons and the capsules of 



46 Sensation 

the joints. These tissues are, of course, closely bound 
together, and are all alike affected by movement of a 
limb or of the body. Their disentanglement, from the 
point of view of sensation, has been a slow and difficult 
matter. Psychology has here been greatly aided by 
pathology; for there are diseases in which the skin 
alone is insensitive, in which skin and muscles alone are 
insensitive, and in which the whole limb is insensitive ; 
so that a first rough differentiation is made for us by 
nature herself. It is also possible artificially to an- 
aesthetise muscle and joint; and psychologists have 
devised various forms of experiment whereby some single 
tissue is thrown into relief above the others. 

Not only, however, are the sensations of these tissues 
aroused by movement ; they also form the sensory basis 
of our perception of the movement of body and limbs. 
For this reason they have been named kinaesthetic, or 
movement-perceiving. They are of the following kinds. 

First, we have from the muscles the sensation of phys- 
ical fatigue. If the skin over a muscle is rendered 
anaesthetic, and the muscle is thrown into forced con- 
traction by an electric current, we have, to begin with, a 
dull dead pressure ; as time goes on, or if the strength of 
the current is increased, this pressure becomes dragging, 
the sensation of fatigue; and finally it becomes sore 
and achy, and passes over into dull pain. From the 
tendons we get a sensation which, when we are actively 
pushing or pulling, we call effort, and when we are 
passively holding or resisting we call strain ; it, too, 
passes over into pain. Lastly, from the joints we have a 
pressure : something like the pressure you feel if you 



§ io. Kinesthetic Sensations 47 

smear the right forefinger with vaseline, and turn it 
in the loosely closed left hand. Take a piece of elastic 
between the forefingers and thumbs ; pull it out, and 
then relax it ; at the moment of relaxation there is a 
pressure in the finger-joints, which is the specific joint- 
sensation. 

Muscle and joint, then, yield sensations which are like 
those of pressure on the skin; and muscle and tendon 
yield sensations which are like those of pain from the 
skin; it is small wonder that the skin, the only portion 
of this whole sensory apparatus that is open to view, 
should ordinarily be credited with the entire number. 
In point of fact, there are very few of the experiences 
listed on p. 45 that do not imply the cooperation of some 
or all of the deeper-lying organs, the nerve-spindles of 
muscle and tendon and the nerve-corpuscles of the 
joints. Those that really belong to the skin owe their 
specific character to the context in which they are set ; 
they change their meaning as a particular word changes 
its meaning from one sentence to another ; think of 
the horribly clammy feel of a bit of cold boiled potato 
as you set your finger on it in the dark, and of its totally 
different feel when you have turned the light on and see 
what it is you are touching! Wetness, for instance, 
proves on analysis to be a complex of pressure and 
temperature ; it is possible, when the observer does not 
know the nature of the stimulus, to arouse the feel of 
wet from perfectly dry things, such as powder, or cot- 
ton wool, or bits of metal ; and it is possible to wet the 
observer's hand with water and yet to arouse the feel 
only of a dry pressure or a dry warmth or cold. 



48 Sensation 

So our very first adventure in psychology brings out, 
as clearly as we need wish, the difference between science 
and common sense. The skin is really living upon bor- 
rowed capital ; it has added to its own sensations those 
derived from the subjacent tissues ; but common sense, 
blind to what it cannot see, ascribes to it a ' sense of 
touch ' that includes everything and examines nothing. 
More than this, common sense fails to draw the distinc- 
tion between process and meaning which we discussed 
in § 6, and therefore ascribes to the sense of touch a 
variety of sensory experience that far outruns the facts. 
Hardness and softness and stickiness and oiliness and 
the rest are, no doubt, separate and distinct as meanings ; 
but when we analyse the corresponding experiences, we 
find only the half-dozen sensations mentioned above. 

§11. Taste and Smell. — The great physiologist 
Carl Ludwig once remarked that smell is the most un- 
selfish of all the senses ; it gives up everything it has to 
taste, and asks nothing in return. Taste is, indeed, an 
inveterate borrower; it borrows from smell and from 
touch, very much as the skin borrows from the under- 
lying organs. When we have a cold in the head, we 
say that we cannot taste; but how is taste affected? 
The truth is that our nose is stopped, and we cannot smell. 

If the surface of the tongue is explored with various 
sorts of stimuli, and the nose is kept out of function 
by plugging of the nostrils, we find four sensations : 
sweet, bitter, sour, and salt." Think, then, how much 
' taste ' there would be in the meats and vegetables that 
deck our'tables, if the nose were closed and condiments 



§ ii. Taste and Smell 49 

were not added ! The sensation of sweet is strongest 
at the tip of the tongue ; bitter at the root ; sour along 
the sides ; salt is fairly evenly distributed over all three 
areas ; the middle region of the tongue is insensitive to 
taste. The sensory cells are grouped in flask-shaped 
structures, the taste-buds or taste-beakers, which are 
again gathered together in or about the papillae of the 
tongue's surface ; some of these you can see, as red specks 
upon the dull pink mucous membrane, if you look at 
the tip of your tongue in a glass. There is only one 
instance of a blend of tastes ; if sweet and salt are mixed, 
there appears a new taste, flat or vapid in character. 
Apart from these five things — sweet, bitter, sour, salt, 
vapid, — we ' taste ' entirely by smell or touch. 

Smell, on the other hand, has more sensations than 
we can count or name ; more sensations, probably, 
than all the rest of our senses put together. We can 
make out certain great groups of odours : flower, fruit, 
spicy, musky, leek, burned, rank, foul, nauseous; we 
may take as examples vanilla, orange, cinnamon, sandal- 
wood, onion, toast, cheese, opium, garbage. Realise 
that the flower odours comprise the scents of all the 
flowers, as well as those of vanilla, tea, hay, and suchlike 
things ; or that the spicy odours comprise the scents of 
all the spices, as well as those of thyme, geranium, 
bergamot, cedarwood, and suchlike things ; and you will 
get some idea of the variety of the world of smell. When 
we add that odours freely blend or combine to give new 
scents, you will understand that the number of smell 
sensations is enormous. 

The sensory cells are found in two patches of mucous 



50 Sensation 

membrane, each about as big as the little-finger nail, 
which He saddle-wise across the blind top of the nasal 
cavities. They cannot be stimulated directly ; but 
particles carried into the outer nostrils by the breath- 
stream, or into the inner nostrils by the air-stream thrown 
back in the act of swallowing, eddy upward to them and 
thus arouse sensation. The second mode of stimula- 
tion plays, of course, into the hands of taste ; we think 
we taste when we swallow ; we forget that we have inner 
nostrils, though we know very well that we can sniff 
up a lotion and bring it down into the back of the 
mouth. But though the stimulation is thus indirect, 
the cells are extraordinarily sensitive ; a mere trace of 
odorous substance will set up a sensation ; and the nose 
is also keenly discriminative. 

Yet in spite of the tens of thousands of sensations, 
and in spite of the extraordinary sensitivity of the 
cells, we often read that in man the sense of smell is 
degenerating ! Of this there is not one particle of evi- 
dence. We could not, truly, live by smell, as dogs do ; 
but then men have never been dogs ; and even so there 
are cases on record — among the Botocudos of Brazil 
and the aboriginal tribes of the Malay peninsula — 
of savage hunters who track their game by scent. 
There is no atom of evidence that, since man was man, 
his sense of smell has degenerated. It is true, on the 
other hand, that the sense of smell has fallen into dis- 
use. The reason is that smell is essentially a ground 
sense, as you may convince yourself any summer day 
that you lie out on the grass, or any time that you 
are willing to spend a few minutes on a dining-room floor ; 



§ 12. Sensations from the Ear 51 

birds in general have a very obtuse sense of smell, and 
many of them perhaps lack sensations of smell alto- 
gether. When, then, mankind assumed the upright 
position, and the nostrils were lifted several feet above 
the surface of the ground, the sense was removed from 
its normal environment, and fell into disuse ; sight and 
hearing took its place. But it may still be used. The 
late Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin's, once made 
an essay, for instance, at an arithmetic by smell ; 
peppermint stood for one, camphor for two, carbolic 
acid for three, and so on. " There was not the slightest 
difficulty in banishing all visual and auditory images 
from the mind, leaving nothing in consciousness besides 
real or imaginary scents. In this way I convinced my- 
self of the possibility of doing sums in simple addition 
with considerable speed and accuracy solely by means 
of imaginary scents. Subtraction succeeded as well as 
addition." Needless to say, it is not worth our while 
to do this sort of work ; the very fact that odours have 
no settled system of names, like cold or pain, red or 
blue, shows that they have not been utilised in human 
life. It is fair to add, also, that sight and hearing are 
better suited than smell to our everyday needs ; for 
smells very soon fade out and disappear; indeed, if 
they did not, the work of garbage collectors or of medi- 
cal students in the dissecting room would be perma- 
nently disagreeable. 

§12. Sensations from the Ear. — Sensations of 
hearing fall into two great groups, tones and noises. 
When we are speaking of tones, we naturally think of 



52 Sensation 

the keyboard of a piano. The piano tones are, in reality, 
not simple tones or sensations but compound tones ; 
and we are able, after a little practice, to break up a 
compound tone into its simple constituents. You may 
get a fair notion of a really simple tone by blowing gently 
across the mouth of an empty bottle. The tone is 
dull and hollow, as compared with the bright solidity 
of a piano tone, but it has also a pleasant mellowness. 
With these two aids, the bottle tone and the piano key- 
board, we may approach our study of tonal sensations. 

Tones have, first of all, the character that we call 
pitch ; they lie, that is, up or down in the scale ; they 
belong to the bass or the treble or to a middle region. 
The word ' pitch ' means height ; it is a term borrowed 
from perceptions of sight; and we cannot yet say cer- 
tainly how it came to be applied to tones. Secondly, 
tones have the character of volume, — another bor- 
rowed word! The highest note on the piano seems 
shrunken, narrowed, pointed, as compared with the 
deepest note in the bass ; and the difference comes out 
even more clearly with bottle tones. Thirdly, tones 
show a sort of recurrence. If you run your finger-nail 
quickly up the keyboard in a glissando, you perceive 
a change only of pitch and volume ; but if you play the 
notes c, d, e in one octave and then in another and then 
in a third, you realise that all the sequences are alike; 
we talk, indeed, of playing the same notes in different 
octaves. This recurring character of tones is called 
tonality. 

It has recently been stated that tones have a further 
character, that of vocality. Consider the series of vowels, 



§ 12. Sensations from the Ear 53 

U, 0, A, E, I (voiced approximately as in the words 
moot, moat, mart, mate, meet) ; there is no doubt that 
U suggests a low bottle tone, and I a high whistle tone. 
Experiments seem to show that, as we go up the scale, 
the tones say M-M, U, O, A, E, I, S-S, F-F, CH (the 
sound in the Scotch loch) ; and, curiously enough, that 
they say these things at intervals of an octave ; so that, 
when we have found a pure O, we find the pure A just 
an octave higher, and the tones that lie between give 
Oa, OA, oA, according to their position. The question 
is still in debate ; for these experiments are opposed by 
others, and the whole subject of the nature of vowel- 
sounds is very thorny. It is quite clear that high and 
low tones sound definitely like U and I ; but some of the 
other vowels are far less distinct; and the point of 
change from vowel to vowel does not appear to be as 
sharp and precise as the first experiments indicated. 
On the whole, we shall do best to suspend judgement. 

There are some ten thousand simple tones in the 
complete tonal scale ; but the compound tones em- 
ployed by music are only about a hundred in number, 
and are selected from a middle range of hearing. The 
compound tone, as we have said, breaks up on analysis 
into simple partial tones ; the lowest is called the fun- 
damental, the others the overtones. It is a remarkable 
fact that the overtones always stand in a definite rela- 
tion to the fundamental. The various musical instru- 
ments do not, however, sound all the overtones alike ; 
their construction favours some, and weakens or de- 
stroys others ; and that is the main reason why we can 
tell a harp-tone, for instance, from a tone of the same 



54 Sensation 

pitch played on oboe or trumpet. The compound 
tones thus owe their colour or timbre, in the first in- 
stance, to the number and relative loudness of the over- 
tones which accompany the fundamental. Timbre has 
other factors; but this is the primary source of dif- 
ference. 

Overtones may readily be heard. Strike a c, very 
lightly, on the piano. When it has ceased to sound, 
strike loudly the c next below; you can probably, 
even at the first trial, hear the higher c in the lower. 
Now strike very lightly the g next above your higher 
c, and then the lower c again loudly; you will prob- 
ably hear the g. Helmholtz, working with thin strings, 
was able to hear no less than fifteen overtones with 
the fundamental. 

This blending of the partial tones in a compound tone, 
to give a single and unitary impression, is an example of 
what is called tonal fusion. The best fusion is that of 
two tones which constitute an octave ; here, • indeed, 
the blend is so close that it is often confused with uni- 
son ; a soprano and a bass singer, told to sing in unison, 
will start off without hesitation an octave apart. Next 
after the octave stands the fifth (c and g) ; boys who 
think they are whistling the same notes often whistle, 
in fact, a fifth apart. Other pairs of tones give lesser 
degrees of fusion. 

Tones generate as well as blend. If you sound to- 
gether two high tones, such as you get from a double 
bicycle whistle, or from small bottles of different sizes, 
you hear, besides these tones themselves, a third tone, 
very much deeper^ larger, more booming; this differ- 



§ 12. Sensations from the Ear 55 

ential tone is easy to find and, once heard, cannot be 
mistaken. Only, the two tones must not be too nearly 
alike in pitch ; for, if they are, you hear, instead of a 
differential tone, slow surges or quick rattlings of sound. 
Take two bottles of the same size, and mistune one of 
them by pouring in small amounts of water ; have them 
blown steadily together; the course of the beats, as 
they are called, from a slow surge through a rattle to a 
harsh blur, may thus be followed. 

Noises, which form a class of sensations distinct from 
tones, are nevertheless aroused by the same sort of 
stimuli. If a tonal stimulus is sounded for a very brief 
time, we hear a dry knock ; if a large number of tonal 
stimuli are sounded all at once, we hear a buzz or crash. 
Noises have pitch ; the spit of a pistol is higher than the 
crack of a rifle, and the sizzle of frying fat is higher than 
the murmur of falling rain ; but no one has yet estab- 
lished a complete scale of noise. 

The sensory cells are found in the inner ear, a tiny 
structure with an extremely complicated mechanism. 
Many different views of its action have been put for- 
ward. That which is most generally accepted was 
proposed by the German physicist H. von Helmholtz. 
The ear contains a narrow triangular membrane which 
carries many thousands of stiffish cross-fibres; and the 
theory is that the air-waves which impinge on the outer 
ear play, selectively, upon these fibres ; every air-wave 
throws into vibration the fibre which is tuned to respond to 
it. A compound tonal stimulus is thus analysed by the 
membrane into a number of simple tonal stimuli, and 
every simple stimulus excites the nerve-fibril attached 



56 Sensation 

to its particular cross-fibre. This theory explains our 
ability to analyse compound tones into their simple 
components. 

The ear is, however, more than an organ of hearing. 
It includes organs, of a very ancient type, which help 
to regulate our balance in walking, our precision in 
turning corners or avoiding obstacles, and so on. Each 
ear, for instance, has three little organs that resemble 
minute spirit-levels, set in the three planes of space, 
and that give us the sensation of ' swimming ' when the 
head is sharply jerked, and the sensation of dizziness 
when we twirl on our heels. For the most part these 
organs act renexly, without furnishing sensations ; or 
at any rate furnish sensations of little strength, and of 
a pressure-like kind that blends indistinguishably with 
the kin aesthetic sensations from the tissues beneath the 
skin ; but in the cases mentioned the swimmy, dizzy 
sensation may be noticed. 

§ 13. Sensations from the Eye. — You may study 
tones by help of the piano and a few medicine bottles ; 
but for the study of lights and colours you must go 
beyond household appliances, and secure a fairly large 
set of coloured and grey papers ; sample-books may be 
obtained, very cheaply, from the manufacturers. You 
will notice, first of all, that as the world of sounds di- 
vides into tones and noises, so does the world of looks 
divide into what we have just called colours and lights. 
The colourless looks or lights may be arranged in a single 
straight line that passes from purest white through the 
greys to deepest black ; they are, as sensations, older 



§ 13. Sensations from the Eye 57 

than colours, just as noise is older than tone. Colours 
are more varied. Consider, to begin with, the char- 
acter of colour proper or hue, that is, the differences 
of colour that show in the rainbow. Hues may be 
arranged, not in one straight line, but in a square. 
Setting out, say, from red, you pass through red-yellow 
or orange to yellow ; that is one straight line ; setting 
out again from yellow, you pass through yellow-green 
to green; from green you pass through green-blue to 
blue ; and finally from blue you come back, by way of 
blue-red (violet and purple), to the original red. Col- 
ours have, besides, two further characters, that bring 
them into relation with lights. They differ in tint, 
that is, in darkness or lightness ; brown is darker than 
yellow, sky-blue is lighter than navy-blue. They differ 
also in saturation or chroma, that is, in poorness or rich- 
ness of hue ; pinks and yellows look faded and washed- 
out as compared with rich reds and blues. Tint brings 
colours into relation with lights, because, if we can say 
that a colour is darker or lighter than a particular grey, 
we can also find some grey that matches it in darkness or 
lightness ; and chroma brings colours into relation with 
lights, in the sense that the better chroma is farther off 
from colourlessness (that is, from grey) than the poorer 
chroma of the same hue and tint. 

All lights and colours are psychologically simple. 
Paints may be mixed on a palette, and colour-stimuli 
may be mixed in all sorts of ways ; we learn in physics 
that white daylight is a mixture of all the rays that are 
seen separately in the rainbow. Yet a white, consid- 
ered just as a look, is perfectly simple ; and the looks 



58 Sensation 

of orange and yellow-green and green-blue are equally 
simple. There are no compound colours, to correspond 
with compound tones. Hence the number of light and 
colour sensations is very large, at least ten times as 
large as the number of simple tones. 

The organ of vision is the eye ; and the eye is a little 
photographic camera, with shutter, iris-diaphragm, self- 
adjusting lens, dark chamber, and self-renewing sensitive 
film. We are concerned only with the film, that is, 
with the retina or nervous network that lines the pos- 
terior half of the eyeball. It seems that the retina is 
really made up of three interfused films; for simplicity's 
sake you may consider them as lying upon one another,, 
just as three saucers might do if you piled them to- 
gether. The oldest and largest film, the bottom saucer, 
gives us the sensations of black and white; the middle- 
most, somewhat smaller, gives us blue and yellow; and 
the topmost and smallest gives us a purplish-red and a 
bluish- green. The existence and size of the three films 
can be shown by experiment; for we are all totally 
colour-blind at the edge of the field of vision, and are 
blind to reds and greens for some distance further in 
toward the centre. There are also cases of inherited 
colour-blindness, in which the eye is blind either for 
all colours (total colour-blindness) or for red and green 
alone (partial colour-blindness) ; the latter form is fairly 
common, as is natural, — for the red-green film, being 
the last to come, might be expected to be the first to go. 
Partial colour-blindness was first brought to scientific 
notice by the English chemist John Dalton in 1798. 
Dalton was a Quaker, but made no objection to wearing 



§ 13. Sensations from the Eye 59 

the scarlet gown of a doctor of laws, because, as he said, 
" to me its colour is that of nature — the colour of those 
green leaves " ; it is needless to remark that he did not 
see green either ! The defect is practically important, 
for pilots and signalmen, who have to distinguish red 
and green lights. 

From these three films we get all the lights and colours 
that we see in the daytime, with the single exception of 
neutral grey ; and this appears to come, not from the 
eye at all, but from the brain. It may be seen even 
when the retina is quite blind, provided that the rest 
of the nervous apparatus is in working order ; and it 
may be seen by night as well as by day; it is mixed, 
physiologically, with all our sensations of light and 
colour, though we cannot by psychological analysis 
pick it out from the lights and colours. Strange enough ! 
but we shall understand better as we go on. The Ger- 
man physiologist Ewald Hering has shown that the 
processes which take place in the films are, in all proba- 
bility, chemical processes of an antagonistic or reversible 
kind; that is why we never see a bluish-yellow, or a 
greenish-red ; if we throw on the same part of the retina, 
at the same time, equal amounts of black and white, 
or of blue and yellow, or of purplish-red and bluish- 
green, the chemical processes go on in opposite direc- 
tions and cancel each other, with the result that we see 
just nothing. This antagonism can be proved, under 
the right experimental conditions, for blue-yellow and 
for red-green; if these pairs are fittingly thrown to- 
gether on the retina we see, in fact, only neutral grey ; 
so that our seeing of the same grey, when black and 



60 Sensation 

white stimuli are acting together, does not necessarily 
mean that grey is a retinal mixture of black and white ; 
the black and white may also cancel each other, and 
leave only the brain-grey to be seen. 

We have, then, the three films in each eyeball, and 
we have the brain-grey behind them. More than this : 
we have a night or twilight eye. When colours fade out, 
as twilight deepens, another retinal film comes into 
play; the lights that we still see come, not from the 
black-white film, but from a fourth film, of the same 
size, whose only sensation is a slightly bluish-white. Of 
course, this white is always mixed, physiologically, 
with the brain-grey ; we never see it by itself ; but we 
owe to it, among other things, the silvery look of blues 
in the twilight. The very centre of the twilight eye is 
totally blind ; if on a moonless night you want to see a 
faint star or a distant street-lamp you must not look 
directly at it, but just to one side of it. Children's 
fear of the dark is partly due to the fact that they 
cannot see what they turn their gaze upon; there 
had seemed to be something there, but when they 
looked at it, it eluded them; and if they think they 
see it again, and look in the new direction, again it 
is gone. 

Now suppose that you are looking out, in daylight, 
over a variegated landscape. Somewhere or other you 
see a patch of light grey. You get this sensation from 
the black- white film and the brain-grey; the white- 
process is stronger than the black-process in the film, 
and the excess of white, added physiologically to the 
brain-grey, shows as light grey. Or again, you see a 



§ 13. Sensations from the Eye 61 

patch of dark purple. This sensation comes from the 
red-green film (excess of red) ; from the blue-yellow film 
(excess of blue) ; from the black-white film (excess of 
black) ; and from the brain-grey. All the lights and 
colours of the landscape can be accounted for in the 
same way. 

Not quite correctly, however ! — there are still other 
factors at work. The film- processes are antagonistic, 
for instance, even when they go on in different parts of a 
film; lights and colours contrast with one another ; if 
you lay a strip of grey paper on red, it looks greenish ; 
on blue, yellowish ; on white, blackish ; make the trial 
with your own papers. So all the various lights and 
colours of the landscape stand out, by contrast, against 
one another; the eye makes their differences greater 
than they ought physically, from the nature of the 
stimuli, to appear. Black, indeed, is wholly a contrast- 
sensation; it has no physical stimulus ; and you see deep 
black only in strong illumination. 

Contrast is effective at once, the moment you cast 
your eyes on the landscape. As time goes on, how- 
ever, the opposed film-processes tend to settle down into a 
state of balance or equilibrium; so that actually, if you 
stared at the landscape long enough, without moving 
your eyes, you would finally see nothing but the brain- 
grey. This levelling down of all lights and all colours 
toward neutral grey is called adaptation. Stand up 
two strips of black and white paper, side by side, and 
stare at their line of junction for a minute or two ; even 
in that short time you will find that they tend toward 
a uniform grey. If, now, a stimulus to which you are 



62 Sensation 

wholly or partly adapted is ' suddenly removed, the 
antagonism of the film-processes shows itself once 
more; you see an after-image. Lay a disc of red on 
grey ; stare at it for half a minute ; flick it away, keep- 
ing the eyes steady, and look at the grey background; 
you see a corresponding disc of green. White leaves a 
black after-image, black a white ; blue a yellow after- 
image, and yellow a blue. 

It is clear, then, that the lights and colours of the land- 
scape depend on many things beside the stimuli there 
presented; they depend on contrast, on the previous 
adaptation of the eye, on the presence or absence of 
after-images. The main reason that we do not notice 
all these influences is that we ordinarily view the land- 
scape, not for itself, but for what it means ; it shows us 
the familiar trees and stream and houses, and we take 
their stability for granted. That is the main reason; 
it is not the only one. We have said, for instance, that 
the normal retina is totally colour-blind along its outer 
edge, and partially colour-blind for some distance in 
toward the centre ; the edge of the landscape ought there- 
fore to be colourless, and a certain outlying portion of it 
ought to appear simply as blue and yellow. There is 
no hint of these differences; and the explanation is 
that we are accustomed to turn our eyes directly towards 
what we want to see, and therefore to view it with all 
three of the daylight films ; head and eyes move so easily, 
and we see so much better with the centre of the retina, 
that we totally disregard the altered look of things seen 
' out of the corner of the eye.' Even if we do not, we 
are likely to remember how the things appear in direct 



§ 13. Sensations from the Eye 63 

vision ; we paint them over, so to speak, with memory- 
colours, colours that represent their natural or average 
appearance at the centre of the visual field; indeed, 
we may paint these colours over tlie whole landscape, and 
in that way correct the changes due to contrast or adaptation. 
We always talk of a certain book as brown ; we recog- 
nise it in all lights, and in all states of the eye, by its 
brown colour ; we see it, in memory-colour, as brown ; 
whereas, if that same brown were shown us in all the 
different circumstances without our knowing it to be 
the same, it might give us sensations of yellow, of pale 
brown, of deep brown, of black. These two factors, 
movement of the eyes and memory-colour, lead us to over- 
look, in great part, the actual variation of lights and 
colours in the landscape. 

A final word may be added regarding the likeness of 
sight and smell. Odours and colours fade out by adap- 
tation; odours, like lights and colours, contrast, and 
even cancel one another ; and smell-stimuli as well as 
sight-stimuli mix to produce new and simple sensations. 
It is highly probable that the sensory cells of smell are 
the seat of only a few chemical processes, by whose 
combination all the wealth of odours is created, just as 
the cone-cells of the retina are the seat of those three 
reversible processes (black-white, blue-yellow, red- 
green) whose combination endows us with the variety of 
daylight vision. We have as yet, however, no such 
definite grounds for hypothesis as we have in the case 
of sight; we cannot even guess what these processes 
are, or how many of them are taking place in the smell- 
membrane. 



64 Sensation 

§ 14. Organic Sensations. — There are still other 
sensations, coming to us from the internal bodily organs ; 
from various parts of the alimentary canal, from the 
organs of sex, from heart and blood-vessels, from the 
lungs, from the sheathing membrane of the bones ; but 
it is doubtful if they are of new kinds ; probably they 
consist simply of pressure, cold, warmth, and pain. 
The dull deep-seated pains that we call aches are, 
perhaps, different from the bright pains of the skin; 
but most of the differences among pains, differences 
that we express by the terms lancing, throbbing, pierc- 
ing, stabbing, thrilling, gnawing, boring, shooting, rack- 
ing, and so on, are either differences of time (steady, 
intermittent) or space (localised, diffused) or degree 
(moderate, acute), or else are differences due to the 
blending of pain with various other sensations. 

The organic sensations, like the kinesthetic, tend 
thus to occur in groups or complexes, and we have as 
yet no very sure means of disentangling them. It is, 
nevertheless, quite clear that in their case, as in that of 
the touch-blends, we have to distinguish between experi- 
ence and meaning. Hunger and nausea seem, for ex- 
ample, to be very different ; yet the core of both turns 
out on analysis to be the same dull pain ; and we know 
that the onset of a bilious attack is often heralded by an 
unusually keen appetite, so that the beginnings of nausea 
are in fact confused with a growing hunger. The dif- 
ference between hunger and nausea is due partly to a 
difference in the processes which ordinarily accompany 
the central pain, — motor restlessness or lassitude in the 
case of hunger, and dizziness in that of nausea ; but more 



§ 15. Sensation and Attribute 65 

especially to a difference of meaning or interpretation ; 
hunger stands for want of food, and nausea for indigestion. 
We shall see later that organic sensations play a large 
part in emotion, as kincesthetic sensations do in perception. 
Plato set the ' spirited ' or ' passionate ' part of the soul 
in the breast; the Psalms abound in phrases that sug- 
gest the same idea; we speak to-day of the heart com- 
ing up to the mouth, or dropping to the boots. So we 
read in the Old Testament that Joseph's bowels yearned 
upon his brother, and in the New Testament of bowels 
of compassion ; and the inner stir that the writers have 
in mind is familiar to everybody. 

§15. Sensation and Attribute. — We have been 
talking all this while about sensations, but we have not 
yet said what sensations are. They make up, as you 
will have guessed, one class of the mental elements, the 
elementary mental processes of § 4, that we reach by 
analysis of our complex experiences. They are there- 
fore simple and irreducible items of the mental world. 
How shall we define them ? 

We can define them, in strictness, only by writing 
down a complete list of what we have called their char- 
acters. Every sensation shows itself to us under various 
aspects, or, as we are accustomed to say, possesses a 
number of attributes. We have been dealing, so far, 
with the qualitative aspect of sensations. This may 
itself be single ; the quality of lights is just their light- 
ness or darkness ; or it may be manifold ; the quality 
of colours can be properly described only if we take 
account of hue, tint, and chroma ; that of tones only 



66 Sensation 

if we take account of pitch, volume, and tonality, per- 
haps also of vocality. Quality is the natural thing to 
start out from, because it is what interests us most in 
everyday life, and has therefore been named ; so that, 
when we speak of sensations, we speak of them by their 
qualities. There are, however, several other attributes ; 
sensations possess intensity, and vividness, and duration, 
and some of them possess extension. We shall discuss 
these aspects later on. 

Does it seem strange, now, that an elementary bit of 
experience should turn so many sides to the observer? 
Think then of chemistry, and of the chemical elements. 
Sodium is a chemical element ; but it has many aspects 
or properties ; physically regarded, it is soft, it is fusible, 
it volatilises at high temperatures ; chemically, it com- 
bines with oxygen, it decomposes water, it is univalent, 
it has a low atomic weight, it is electropositive, and so 
forth. Sodium cannot be reduced, chemically, to any- 
thing simpler than itself, but it is nevertheless many- 
sided. The same thing is true of sensations. 

So a complete list of the aspects or attributes of sensa- 
tion is as near as we can come to a definition. But since 
that sort of statement is clumsy ; since we cannot make 
it complete till we have observed the sensations under 
all their possible aspects ; and since we know that mental 
processes are correlated with processes in the nervous 
system; we may adopt another plan, and define sensa- 
tion by reference to the special bodily organ with which it 
is connected. Sensations are then elementary mental 
processes that come to us by way of skin, muscle, ear, 
and the rest of the sense-organs. 



§ i6. The Intensity of Sensation 67 

§ 16. The Intensity of Sensation. — A sensation may 
remain the same in quality, and yet vary in strength 
or intensity. A pressure may be the pressure of an 
ounce or of half-a-pound ; it is always pressure, the 
same quality, but its intensity differs. The tone you 
get by blowing across the mouth of a bottle may be 
loud or faint, though it is still the same pitch, the same 
tone. The weight you carry may strain the arm very 
little or a great deal ; the sensation of strain from the 
tendons is the same in both cases, but its intensity is 
different. 

The study of this attribute of sensations has led to 
the discovery of a psychological law, which has much 
practical importance. Suppose that we are working 
with intensities of noise, the noise made by the drop of 
an ivory ball upon an ebony block. Suppose that, by 
varying the height from which the ball falls, we have 
found a series of intensities of sensation a, b, c, d, e, which 
may be represented by the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; a 
series, that is, in which the difference between the two 
noises a and b is equal in sensation to the difference be- 
tween b and c, or between c and d, or between d and e. 
That sounds a little difficult ; but the series may really 
be established without much trouble. Now, what about 
the stimuli, the heights of fall? Must the ball drop 
twice as far for b as for a, three times as far for c as for 
a, and so on ? No : equal differences in intensity of 
sensation do not correspond with equal differences in in- 
tensity of stimulus. Equal differences in intensity of 
sensation correspond rather with relatively equal differ- 
ence in the intensity of stimulus. In other words, 



68 Sensation 

the sensation-series 12345 corresponds with 
a stimulus-series of the type 1 248 16 ; 
or, mathematically expressed, an arithmetical series of 
intensities of sensation is correlated with a geometrical 
series of intensities of stimulus. In the instance given, 
the exponent of the geometrical series is 2 ; but that is 
only an imaginary instance; in the case of noise the 
actual exponent is f , so that 

the sensation-series 1234 5 corresponds with 
the stimulus series 1 f -$- |f 2 g\ 6 - ; 
or, if we take units of some sort, such as millimetres of 
height of fall, 

the sensation-series 12345 corresponds with 

the stimulus-series 81 108 144 192 256. 

This law of correlation was first formulated by the 
German physiologist E. H. Weber in 1834 as follows : 
" in comparing objects and observing the distinction 
between them, we perceive, not the difference between 
the objects, but the ratio of this difference to the magni- 
tude of the objects compared." Weber speaks of ob- 
jects, because he was thinking of experiments that he 
had made with weights ; he should have said sensations. 
His law holds, over a middle range of intensities of sen- 
sation, for lights, sounds, pressures, various kinaesthetic 
complexes, and odours. Its validity in the fields of 
taste and temperature is doubtful. 

It is because of Weber's law that we are able to ignore 
the manifold changes of illumination to which we are 
exposed in the course of the daylight hours ; that the 
painter, who cannot at all reproduce by his pigments 
the absolute intensities of light in nature, can neverthe- 



§ 1 6. The Intensity of Sensation 69 

less give us a recognisably true copy of any natural 
scene; and that a large block of seats in the concert- 
room, at a moderate distance from the stage, can all be 
sold at the same price and all have equal advantages 
for hearing. You will readily find other instances of 
its working, if you are clear as regards the principle in- 
volved ; namely, that the less you have of anything, 
the less need be added, and the more you have, the more 
must be added, to make an appreciable difference ; or, 
on the negative side, that you are not likely to notice 
any difference in your surroundings, so long as the rela- 
tions of the stimuli remain unchanged. So Weber's law 
furnishes yet another reason for the apparent stability of 
the landscape that we discussed on p. 63. 



7<d Sensation 

Questions and Exercises 

(i) Mark out, by indelible ink, a sq. cm. upon the outer 
surface of the forearm. Make upon transparent paper 
three maps of the area, marking hairs, veins, etc. Work 
over the area (a) with the horsehair, for pressure spots; 
(b) with a warmed carpenter's spike, for warm spots; 
and (c) with a cooled spike, for cold spots. Enter the spots, 
as you find them, on the maps ; remember to dot the hair 
down for pressure, but to draw the spike slowly and evenly 
along the skin for temperature. Lay the three maps to- 
gether, and note the distribution and the relative number of 
the spots. 

(2) After shampooing, the scalp is sensitive and irritable 
under the brush. Why ? 

(3) When you are writing with a pencil, or prodding in a 
pool with a stick, the sensations seem to come from the end 
of the pencil or stick. What organs are involved? And 
why should the sensations be localised as they are? Try 
to think out some experimental means of attacking this 
question. 

(4) What sensations do you get in the act of yawning? 
What in that of swallowing? What unusual sensations do 
you have, from the face, after you have been running hard? 

(5) How do sour and sweet in the mouth affect the sense 
of touch? Make solutions, in varying strengths, of sugar and 
of the juice of some very sour fruit ; leave plenty of time be- 
tween observations. 

(6) Prepare some bits of apple, onion, and raw potato. 
Close your eyes and hold your nose; then pick up these 
morsels at random, and chew them. Can you tell the differ- 
ence ? How ? 

(7) Is there any evidence of taste contrast? 

(8) Secure adaptation to the scent of camphor; breathe 
regularly, and note the length of time necessary for the odour 
to disappear. Now smell at vanilla, heliotrope, absolute 



Questions and Exercises 71 

alcohol. Do you smell them ? Try to account for the result, 
arguing by analogy from what you know of colours. 

(9) The next time that you listen to an orchestra, pick out 
the tones of the various instruments, and try to describe 
their timbre ; do not be afraid to string adjectives together, 
but be sure that you hear what you put down. Later, look 
up in a reference-book the composition of these various com- 
pound tones, and see if there is any correlation between your 
description and the number and loudness of the overtones. 

(10) If you drop a block of wood on a desk, the sound is 
simply noisy. If the same block forms part of a xylophone 
scale, and is struck with the wooden hammer, it gives a tone. 
How is this? 

(n) When you next go to a reception, stand outside the 
main rooms for a minute, and try to determine the pitch of 
the buzz of voices; try to sing the pitch yourself. Is the 
buzz tonal or merely noisy ? 

(12) When you are listening to beats, do you hear one 
beating tone, or both the primary tones beating? If one 
tone only, is it identical with either of the primaries? 

(13) Test the law of visual antagonism by getting the after- 
images of a number of colours. 

(14) To prove normal colour-blindness, get a small square 
of red glass ; stand before a window, with your left eye closed 
and your right eye fixed upon some distant point ; bring the 
red glass slowly into the field, with the left hand, and note 
its changes. 

(15) Can you suggest experiments for working out in de- 
tail the laws of visual contrast? Try to think what sort of 
things would be likely to enhance or to reduce the contrast- 
effect. 

(16) Could a man go through life, and take an ordinary 
place in society, without knowing that he was colour-blind? 
Give your reasons. 

(17) Blue and yellow are antagonistic ; yet blue and yellow 
paints, mixed on the palette, give green. How is this ? 



72 Sensation 

(18) Dalton says : " In lecturing on optics I got six ribands, 
— blue, pink, lilac, — and red, green, and brown, — which 
matched very well, and told the curious audience so. One 
gentleman came up immediately afterwards and told me he 
perfectly agreed with me ; he had not remarked the difference 
by candlelight." How could these triads have been confused? 
and would the candlelight make any difference? 

References 

A more detailed treatment of sensation is given in the 
author's Text-book of Psychology, 1910, 46 ff., 201 ff. The 
reader may further consult : J. H. Parsons, An Introduction 
to the Study of Colour Vision, 1915 ; H. L. F. von Helmholtz, 
On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the 
Theory of Music, translated by A. J. Ellis, 1895 ; C. S. Myers, 
A Text-book of Experimental Psychology, pt. i., 191 1, chs. 
2-8, 18, 19 ; G. T. Ladd and R. S. Wood worth, Elements of 
Physiological Psychology, 191 1, pt. ii., chs. 1-3 ; W. Wundt, 
Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology, 1896, Lects. 2-7 ; 
various articles in Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, 
ed. by J. M. Baldwin, vols, i., ii., 1901-2 ; the chapters on 
sensation in E. A. Schafer, Text-book of Physiology, ii., 
1900, and W. H. Howell, A Text-book of Physiology, 1908; 

E. Mach, Contributions to the Analysis of the Sensations, 
trs. by C. M. Williams, 1910; E. B. Titchener, Experimental 
Psychology, II., ii., 1905, Introduction. 

The special references to smell will be found in E. B. Tylor, 
Anthropology, 1881, ch. ix., 207; W. W. Skeat and C. O. 
Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, i., 1906, 200; 

F. Gal ton, Psychological Review, i., 1894, 61 ff. ; and those 
to Dalton in W. C. Henry, Memoirs of the Life and Scientific 
Researches of John Dalton, 1854, 24, 49, 172, 187. For the 
term kincesthesis see H. C. Bastian, The Brain as an Organ 
of Mind, 1885, 543- 



CHAPTER III 

Simple Image and Feeling 

Conceptions and apparitions [sensations and images] are nothing 
really but motion in some internal substance of the head ; which motion 
not stopping there, but proceeding to the heart, of necessity must there 
either help or hinder the motion which is called vital ; when it helpeth, it 
is called pleasure; but when such motion weakeneth or hindereth the 
vital motion, then it is called pain. v — Thomas Hobbes 

§ 17. Simple Images. — Common sense draws a sharp 
distinction between our present perception of an object 
or event, and our later revival of it in memory; and 
psychologists have been accustomed, in the same way, 
to distinguish the simple sensation, the elementary pro- 
cess in perception, from the simple image, the elementary 
process in memory. In fact, however, it is very doubtful 
if there is any real psychological difference between sensa- 
tion and image. The statement is often made that the 
image is weaker, fainter, more fleeting than the corre- 
sponding sensation. Thus, the great philosopher David 
Hume (1711-1776) wrote: "All the perceptions of the 
human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, 
which I shall call impressions and ideas. [Hume's termi- 
nology is different from ours.] The difference between 
these consists in the degrees of force and liveliness, with 
which they strike upon the mind." Hume himself 
admits that " in sleep, in a fever, in madness, or in any 
very violent emotions of soul, our ideas may approach 

73 



74 Simple Image and Feeling 

to our impressions ; as on the other hand it sometimes 
happens that our impressions are so faint and low, that 
we cannot distinguish them from our ideas." It is 
certain that sensation and image are often confused; 
and some writers have accordingly proposed to drop the 
term ' image ' and to replace it by ' secondary sensa- 
tion.' Let us look at the facts. 

There is no department of sense in which sensation 
stops entirely when its stimulus is removed ; in all cases, 
even in that of sound, the sensation is prolonged, for a 
longer or shorter time, and either after an interval or 
without interruption, in what is called the positive after- 
image. Blow out a match in the dark, and wave the 
glowing stem about ; you see complete circles or figures 
of eight; the sensation persists, although the stimulus 
has passed from one part of the retina to another. In 
some departments, the positive is followed by a nega- 
tive after-image ; we have already mentioned the 
antagonistic after-images of sight. So the removal of a 
continued warm stimulus leaves a sensation of coolness ; 
and the swimming in the head that you feel while twirl- 
ing round is followed, when you come to rest, by a swim- 
ming in the opposite direction. Lastly, the name of 
memory after-image has been given to an experience 
which is most familiar, perhaps, in the taking of dicta- 
tion ; as you write the words last spoken, the speaker's 
voice still rings in your ears ; the sound hangs for a few 
seconds, as if arrested, and your pen is guided by the 
mental echo. Similarly, an attentive glance at an object 
may set up a sort of photographic image that remains 
distinct for several seconds. 



§ 17. Simple Images 75 

All the after-images are sensory in character. So too 
are the memory colours that we habitually lay over 
familiar objects (p. 63), and that make us see snow as 
white and gold as yellow and coal as black, just because 
they are ordinarily or typically white and yellow and 
black. So also are the recurrent images, those trouble- 
some and haunting images to which most of us are sub- 
ject at times : the tunes that run in our head and that 
we cannot get rid of, the rows of figures that obsess us 
after a long morning of calculation, the bright disc that 
keeps cropping up after we have spent several hours at 
the microscope. So, again, are the images that serve 
to complete and round out an imperfect perception. A 
favourite device of modern advertising is to outline the 
human figure only in part and to leave the remainder 
to the imagination; and you will perhaps notice, if 
you look attentive^ at such a figure, that the outline, so 
far as the suggestion of the neighbouring lines is unam- 
biguous, is indeed completed in image, black on white or 
colour on colour ; only where the completion is uncer- 
tain do the images fail. These tied images, so called 
because they are unequivocally bound up with the sen- 
sory portion of the perception, occur also in the sphere of 
sound ; a missing orchestral part, if it is familiar, may be 
clearly heard by the conductor. 

Not everyone has recurrent images; and perhaps only a 
large minority have tied images. The image — even if we 
decide that it is only a secondary sensation, psychologi- 
cally indistinguishable from sensation — nevertheless 
represents a later stage of biological development than 
the sensation proper, and our equipment of images is 



76 Simple Image and Feeling 

correspondingly variable; your own experience may 
be richly imaginal, while your friend, under the same 
conditions, has hardly a trace of imagery. Those who 
do possess recurrent and tied images agree that they are 
distinguished from sensations rather by their context, 
by the presence or absence of certain other processes, 
than by any difference of nature. The same thing 
holds of those abnormal phenomena to which Hume 
referred. Hallucinatory images are by no means un- 
common in the drowsy period that precedes sleep ; we 
hear the telephone bell, or we hear our name called; 
some of us — there are, again, great differences in indi- 
viduals — have hallucinations of sight. Dream images 
also differ markedly from individual to individual; but 
the dream is nearly always accepted as a real event. 
One of the most puzzling facts in this connection is the 
occurrence of concomitant or synaesthetic images. In 
the commonest case, that of coloured hearing, any 
auditory stimulus arouses, along with the appropriate 
sensation of hearing, whether tone or noise, a visual 
image of light or colour. The sound of the word 
Tuesday, for instance, may be seen as a light grey-green 
followed by a yellow ! We might suppose, at first 
thought, that coloured hearing is due to association, to 
a connection between sight and hearing set up in child- 
hood and continued into adult life ; but the evidence 
points to some inborn connection in the nervous system ; 
coloured hearing tends strongly to run in families. 
Moreover, we know of no natural or normal association 
of colours with tones, although the attempt has often 
been made to illustrate music by colours; the recent 



§ 17. Simple Images 77 

colour-scoring of the Russian composer Scriabin is, for 
instance, nothing more than an idiosyncrasy, and will 
make no general or permanent appeal to the musical 
public. There are many other kinds of synesthesia, 
besides this connection of sight and sound ; and we have 
no reason to think that every instance is to be explained 
in just the same way ; in all cases, however, we have a 
particular sensation uniformly accompanied by another, 
which we may call either a secondary sensation or an 
image of sensory character. 

Coming back to the normal life, we have next to note 
the part played in certain minds by habitual images. 
Just as, in Wagner's operas, the performer comes upon 
the stage to the accompaniment of some characteristic 
musical phrase, some ' motive,' as it is called, which 
recurs again and again as he enters and reenters to take 
his share of the action, so in minds of the imaginal type 
such general notions as ' virtue ' and ' commerce ' and 
' summer ' may regularly call up mental pictures, little 
groups of images, which illustrate or characterise the 
notions : thus, virtue may be pictured mentally by 
the flash of a human figure, standing very upright. 
These pictures are usually incomplete, mere impression- 
ist sketches ; but they may remain unchanged for years. 

Finally, we come to the images which enter into our 
ideas of memory and of imagination. We discuss these 
ideas later ; here we need only say that the psychological 
distinction between sensation and image, if it is to be 
drawn at all, must be drawn between sensation and the 
free images of memory and imagination, and cannot be 
drawn earlier. Some psychologists believe that a 



78 Simple Image and Feeling 

memory-image can always be distinguished from a sen- 
sation, that the two processes differ in their intrinsic 
nature. It is difficult to put the question to the test 
of experiment; but what evidence we have seems to 
look the other way. We shall do best to suspend judge- 
ment. 

The word ' image ' is unfortunately used, as the fore- 
going paragraphs have shown, both for the simple image 
and for groups or clusters of images ; thus, the recurrent 
image and the habitual image are always complex. 
Summing up our results, with this warning in mind, we 
may say that positive and negative after-images, mem- 
ory colours, and syn aesthetic images are definitely sen- 
sory in character; that the simple images which make 
up memory after-images, recurrent and tied and habitual 
images, hallucinations and dreams, appear to be of the 
same kind ; and that the simple images which compose 
our ideas of memory and imagination may or may not 
be intrinsically different from sensations. The simple 
image may therefore be defined as an elementary mental 
process, akin to sensation and perhaps indistinguishable 
from it, which persists when the sensory stimulus is with- 
drawn or appears when the sensory stimulus is absent. We 
may say further that, while every normal person has 
very much the same equipment of sensations, there are 
great individual differences in the matter of secondary 
sensations or images ; in some cases they are interwoven 
into the whole tissue of experience, in others they are 
infrequent or even lacking; we shall see presently 
how they may be replaced. In general, images of sight 
and sound are common ; then come images of touch and 



§ 1 8. Simple Feelings and Sense-Feelings 79 

temperature, and then again images of taste and smell, 
which are uncommon; organic images are very rare. 
Kinesthetic images undoubtedly occur, and probably 
occur frequently; but they are likely to blend with 
kinesthetic sensations, and so to escape notice. 

§ 18. Simple Feelings and Sense-Feelings. — Many 
of our experiences are indifferent; but many of them, 
again, are pleasant or unpleasant. These two words, 
pleasant and unpleasant, denote elementary mental 
processes of a different sort from sensations and images ; 
they are known as simple feelings. The term ' feeling ' 
is itself even more ambiguous than the term ' image ' ; 
it is natural to speak of ' feeling ' a strain or effort, a 
warmth or cold ; but we shall henceforth use it only 
in its technical meaning, to indicate the way in which 
stimuli affect us, pleasantly or unpleasantly. We must 
discard altogether the words pleasure and pain, although 
they have long been current as the names of the simple 
feelings, and although they are much less clumsy than 
pleasant and unpleasant. We discard them because 
pain is a sensation (p. 43) ; and pains, while usually 
unpleasant, may at times be pleasant; the scratching 
that relieves an itch and the nip of the wind on a brisk 
winter's day are both pains, but they are also both 
pleasant. 

The main difference between sensation and simple 
feeling is that a feeling cannot be made the object of direct 
attention. Try to attend to the pleasantness or unpleas- 
antness of an experience, and the feeling evaporates, 
eludes you ; it is like clutching a ghost ; you find your- 



80 Simple Image and Feeling 

self beyond the feeling, so to speak, and face to face 
with some obtrusive sensation or image that you had 
no wish to meet. This peculiarity of feeling must, of 
course, be taken account of in our conduct of the psy- 
chological method of observation. The formula of 
observation (p. 19) was : 

psychological (vivid experience — >- full report) . 

In the case of sensation, the observer is set or disposed, 
beforehand, to attend to sensation and to report upon 
sensation ; the sensation comes, and is attended to ; 
and the report which follows is determined, under the 
influence of the preliminary set or disposition, by the 
nature of the sensation. In the case of feeling, the ob- 
server is set to attend to sensation, but to report upon 
the feeling which accompanies the sensation ; the sensa- 
tion comes and is attended to ; and the report then 
describes, under the influence of the preliminary set, 
the feeling which accompanied the sensation. That 
sounds a little paradoxical ; but the method is not diffi- 
cult in practice ; and it has the advantage that we can 
use all manner of sensory stimuli (colours, tones, every- 
thing) in our study of feeling. 

We find, first of all, that pleasant and unpleasant are 
really opposites; the colour or tone that is most often re- 
ported as pleasant is least often reported as unpleasant, 
and conversely. An obvious result? Not at all; for 
what is obvious to common sense demands very care- 
ful consideration at the hands of science; and the fact 
that, in this instance, common sense turns out to be 
right does not at all mean that we should have been 



§ 1 8. Simple Feelings and Sense-Feelings 81 

justified in taking it for granted. We find, secondly, 
that intensity of feeling behaves like intensity of sensa- 
tion (p. 67) ; the more pleasant or unpleasant an experi- 
ence is, the more must the stimulus be changed if we are 
to feel a difference ; and the less pleasant or unpleasant 
it is, the less change need be made to produce a change of 
feeling. 

There is no convincing evidence of any qualities of feel- 
ing other than pleasant and unpleasant. There is evidence, 
on the other hand, that the simple feelings form intimate 
and characteristic blends with sensations, and especially 
with kinesthetic and organic sensations ; we may call 
such blends sense-feelings. Every sensory stimulus, 
even so local and trifling a thing as a tone of moderate 
intensity, sets up a widespread organic disturbance : 
a result that is natural, perhaps, in view of the manifold 
interconnections within the nervous system, but that 
we are nevertheless likely to overlook. This organic 
stir brings out kinesthetic and organic sensations which 
may form the body of a sense-feeling, developed round 
about the disturbing tone, and giving it a peculiar tinge 
of feeling that it would not otherwise possess. The same 
thing holds of other stimuli. We can distinguish six 
types or classes of these sense-feelings: the agreeable and 
disagreeable, the exciting and subduing, and the straining 
and relaxing. Tastes and smells are preeminently agree- 
able or disagreeable. Deep tones are solemn and seri- 
ous, that is, subduing ; high tones are cheerful and play- 
ful, that is, exciting. The painter's ' warm ' colours, red 
and yellow, are exciting ; his ' cold ' blues are subduing ; 
the gloom of a darkened room is positively depressing. 



82 Simple Image and Feeling 

Warmth and cold are themselves exciting and subduing. 
The straining and relaxing feelings are dependent upon 
the temporal course and succession of sensations; the 
interminable pedal-point in B? with which Wagner 
begins the -Ring sets up a feeling of tension which is re- 
laxed when the B$ is added, only to grow again, and 
again relax when new tones are introduced ; and if you 
follow the strokes of a slow-beating metronome you get 
a similar alternation of the two sense-feelings. Notice 
that the six names are all alike class-names ; the sense- 
feelings themselves appear in numberless variety; but any 
particular sense-feeling may be referred to one or more 
of the classes. Notice also that the paired names are 
all opposites : a sense-feeling may be agreeably exciting, 
or agreeably subduing, but it cannot be excitingly sub- 
duing; and so on with the rest. Remember finally 
that the simple feeling taken alone, and not blended 
with sensory qualities into a sense-feeling, is always a 
bare pleasant or unpleasant. 

We must next discuss the organic disturbances that ac- 
company feeling itself. We know that feelings ' express ' 
themselves in various ways ; we blush for shame and 
pale from fear ; we shake with rage, and our ' heart 
beats high ' with hope. Now it is possible to measure 
all these organic changes ; to record the rate and height 
of pulse, for instance, or the variation in the volume of 
a limb according as blood flows into it or is withdrawn 
from it; physiology puts the necessary instruments at 
our disposal. The observer may therefore be harnessed 
to some such system of recording apparatus, and may be 
subjected to some pleasant or unpleasant stimulus; he 



§ 18. Simple Feelings and Sense-Feelings 83 

reports what he feels, and the experimenter is able to 
compare the report with the record from the instrument. 
The results of work of this sort are summed up in the 
following table ; where a + stands for an increase, and 
a — for a decrease, of rate or height or volume, as the 
case may be. 

Pleasant Unpleasant 

Rate of pulse — + 

Height of pulse + — 

Volume of arm + — 

Rate of breathing + — 

Depth of breathing ? — ? + 

The table asserts that, during a pleasant experience, 
our pulse is slowed and heightened ; blood flows from 
the trunk into the extremities ; and our breathing quick- 
ens and, perhaps, grows more shallow. During an un- 
pleasant experience, the reverse of all these things takes 
place. 

The pleasant and unpleasant experiences here referred 
to are, of course, agreeable and disagreeable sense-feel- 
ings ; and we have the right to correlate the organic 
changes with pleasant and unpleasant feeling only 
because they remain the same so long as feeling remains 
the same, whatever may be the character of the sensory 
stimulus. There can be no doubt that similar tables 
may presently be made out for the other sense-f eelings ; 
indeed, that must be the case, in so far as the sense- 
feelings are stable blends of simple feeling with sensa- 
tions. But it is not easy, in the case of the other pairs, 
to secure a stable blend, to keep the nature of the ' ex- 
citement ' or the ' relaxation ' just the same from experi- 



84 Simple Image and Feeling 

ment to experiment; and we shall therefore make no 
attempt here to list their bodily expressions. We come 
back to the general subject of expression when we deal 
with emotion (§ 51). 

Can we now say anything definite about the nervous 
correlate of the simple feelings? Can we say what is 
going on in the nervous system when we feel pleasantly 
or unpleasantly ? Unfortunately no : we have many 
theories, but no positive knowledge. There is, however, 
one view of feeling which has persisted from Aristotle 
to the present day ; and we must say a word about it, 
if only because you cannot read far in psychology with- 
out running against some form of it, and you should 
not blindly accept it. We may call it the biological 
theory of feeling. Aristotle said that pleasure (we must 
now use the old-fashioned terms) accompanies the un- 
impeded exercise of any faculty, that is, the healthy 
exercise of any mental faculty upon its appropriate 
object; and that pain accompanies impeded activity. 
In more modern language, pleasure is for Aristotle a 
matter of efficiency. Herbert Spencer puts the same 
idea into evolutionary language ; " pains are the correla- 
tives of actions injurious to the organism, while pleas- 
ures are the correlatives of actions conducive to its 
welfare." Does this statement really mean, though, 
that a man's personal pleasures are always good for him 
and his personal pains bad for him ? — because, if that 
is meant, it is not difficult to think of any number of 
cases to the contrary. No, not quite that; Spencer 
would qualify by saying that nature can only strike an 
average for the species; she cannot attend in detail 



§ 1 8. Simple Feelings and Sense-Feelings 85 

to the individual ; the sentence means that on the whole, 
in the long run, pleasures are good and pains are bad 
for us. We might reply that it is rather a poor average 
that makes the tearing off of a finger nail so exquisitely 
painful, though the loss hardly matters, and that al- 
lows the ravages of pulmonary tuberculosis to run so 
long a course before warning is given to the suffering 
organism. But let us offer a definite objection : a sur- 
gical operation is not pleasant; yet it may be the one 
thing necessary to save life. Spencer has his answer : 
" special and proximate pleasures and pains must be 
disregarded out of consideration for remote and diffused 
pleasures and pains." In that case, however, — if the 
feelings are merely witnesses to the state of affairs at 
the moment, and not prophets of the future, — the 
correlation does not help us very much ; nature's achieve- 
ment is less important, even for the species, than it 
seemed at first. Or take another objection : I am over- 
heated, and I sit in a cooling draught; the result is 
catarrh or pneumonia; yet the coolness was pleasant. 
To be sure, says the biologist ; and the local effect was 
good for you ; the testimony of the feelings is limited 
in space as I have just acknowledged it to be limited 
in time. Again, however, we must rejoin that, in that 
event, the correlation is of less importance to the race 
than it was asserted to be ; if things that are ' sweet 
in the mouth ' are going to be ' bitter in the belly ' we 
want to know it ; it is small comfort to be told that the 
organ of taste is benefited by the pleasant sweetness. 
And so the argument might go on. 

There is yet another difficulty. " Every pleasure," 



86 Simple Image and Feeling 

says Spencer, " increases vitality ; every pain decreases 
vitality. Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every 
pain lowers the tide of life." Yet we read elsewhere 
that " pleasures are the incentives to life-supporting 
acts, and pains the deterrents from life-destroying acts." 
Pain, then, is thoroughly bad for us, because it is detri- 
mental to life ; but pain at the same time is thoroughly 
good for us, because it prevents our doing what is detri- 
mental to life. Pain as detrimental ought to have been 
eliminated by natural selection ; pain as warning of what 
is detrimental has been conserved by natural selection. 
Can the two points of view be reconciled ? 

It would be foolish and overhasty to reject outright the 
biological view of feeling; the very fact that.it has lasted 
through so many centuries and, in some form or other, 
has appealed to so many psychologists — the quotation 
which heads this chapter is a case in point ! — raises 
a presumption in its favour. Our conclusion must 
rather be this : that general formulas, which need to be 
qualified almost as soon as they are phrased, and which 
lay themselves open to all kinds of specific objections, 
cannot help us to a psychology of feeling — or of any- 
thing else. When we have found out, by detailed ex- 
perimental work, what the nervous correlate of simple 
feeling really is, then we may perhaps advance to some 
general biological view; but the detailed work must 
come first. 



Questions and Exercises 87 

Questions and Exercises 

(1) Answer the questions printed on pp. 255, 256 of F. 
Gal ton's Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development 
(Everyman's Library, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York; 
price 35 cents). When you have answered them, read 
Galton's discussion of mental imagery, pp. 57 ff. (You will 
find many other interesting things in the book ; for instance, 
the discussion of synesthesia, pp. 105 ff.) 

(2) Try to secure a memory after-image, (a) by glancing 
attentively at a lamplit study-table, and then closing the 
eyes; and (b) by listening attentively to a short musical 
phrase or to a dictated sentence. How do you distinguish 
this image from a positive after-image? 

(3) Describe the tied images that you find in the following 
figure. 



r 1 



\ 



'"'},? 



(4) How is it that very great differences in mental imagery 
may go undetected in everyday life? 

(5) Try to give instances, from your own experience, 
(a) of the confusion of sensation and image, (b) of memory- 
colours, and (c) of the alteration of a perception by an 
image-complex. (An instance under (c) would be, for ex- 
ample, your failure to find something that you had lost, 
although it lay in plain sight, because you had a mental 
picture of it, different from its actual look in perception.) 

(6) The following have been given, by various psychol- 
ogists, as differences between sensation and simple feeling. 
What have you to say about them ? (a) Sensation depends 
upon a present stimulus ; feeling depends not only upon 
stimulus, but upon the whole state of the individual at the 
moment, (b) Sensations range between maximal differences ; 
feelings between maximal opposites. (c) All sensations have 



88 Simple Image and Feeling 

corresponding images ; there is no image of pleasantness or 
unpleasantness, (d) Sensations may be localised ; feelings 
are not localisable. 

(7) Professor Wundt, who first distinguished the groups 
of agreeable and disagreeable, exciting and subduing, strain- 
ing and relaxing feelings, thinks that these experiences are 
not sense-feelings, but are all simple feelings; so that there 
are three dimensions of simple feeling, the pleasant-unpleasant, 
the exciting-subduing, and the straining-relaxing, corre- 
sponding in a way with the three dimensions of space. What 
criticism have you to offer? And how would you test 
Wundt's theory? 

(8) Do you think that a mixed feeling, a feeling which is 
at the same moment pleasant and unpleasant, is a possible 
experience? Give your reasons, and support them by ob- 
servations. Can you remember any references, that bear 
on the question, in poetry or fiction ? 

(9) Analyse the sense-feelings of smarting pain, of health, 
of hunger, of oppressive heat. 

(10) Can you give, from your own experience, any evidence 
for the belief that Weber's law holds for intensity of feeling? 

(n) The chapter teaches that the pleasantness of a perfume, 
of a word of praise, and of a kindly action is, as simple 
feeling, identical; there are no qualitative differences in 
the pleasant. To many persons this teaching is repugnant. 
Why? and how should their objections be answered? 

(12) Define (without looking at the book!) sensation, 
simple image, simple feeling. 

References 

On images: Galton, as above; D. Hume, A Treatise of 
Human Nature, 1739, bk. i., pt. i., § 1 ; J. E. Downey, An Ex- 
periment on Getting an After-image from a Mental Image, 
in Psychological Review, viii., 1 901, 42; E. B. Titchener, 
Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought- 



References 89 

processes, 1909, Lect. 1 ; Text-book of Psychology, 1910, 
194 ff. 

On feeling : H. Spencer, The Principles of Psychology, i., 
1881, ch. ix. ; The Data of Ethics, 1887, chs. vi., vii. ; J. M. 
Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the Race: 
Methods and Processes, 1906, ch. xvi., § 3 ; W. Wundt, Out- 
lines of Psychology, trs. C. H. Judd, 1907, §§ 7, 12; E. B. 
Titchener, Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feeling 
and Attention, 1908, Lects. 2-4; Text-book of Psychology, 

1 9 10, 225 ff. For experimental methods: Titchener, Ex- 
perimental Psychology, I., i., 1901, ch. vii. ; ii., 1901, ch. vii.; 
C. S. Myers, A Text-book of Experimental Psychology, L, 

191 1, ch. xxiv. 



CHAPTER IV 

Attention 

Quaeritur utrum intellectus noster possit multa simul intelligere. 
Respondeo dicendum quod intellectus quidem potest simul multa intel- 
ligere per modum unius, non autem multa per modum multorum. — 
St. Thomas Aquinas 

§19. The Problem of Attention. — We have now 
finished our survey of the elementary processes of mind ; 
all our complex experiences may be analysed into sensa- 
tions, simple images, and simple feelings. There has 
been no special difficulty, so far, in exchanging the com- 
mon-sense point of view for that of scientific psychology. 
You may not have realised, positively and intimately, 
that sensations and simple images are all meaningless; 
that we have described them simply as processes, as 
experiences going on ; you may have been surprised, 
in view of the everyday distinction of perception from 
memory and imagination, to find that the simple image 
is only doubtfully to be distinguished from the sensa- 
tion; and you may also have been surprised to learn 
that the feelings owe their manifold variety of tang and 
tincture to the sensations with which a simple feeling, 
pleasant or unpleasant, is blended. There is, however, 
no real difficulty, when once these things are pointed 
out, in taking up a scientific standpoint towards the 
mental elements. 

90 



§ i9- The Problem of Attention 91 

As soon as we pass to consider attention, the case is 
changed ; we come into definite conflict with popular 
psychology. Common sense regards attention as a 
voluntary concentration of the mind. For instance : 
I am sitting at my desk, thinking out and writing down 
the sentences of this paragraph. As I write, I am sub- 
ject to all sorts of sensory stimuli; the temperature of 
the room, the pressure of my clothes, the sight of vari- 
ous pieces of furniture, the sounds from house and street, 
the scents coming from the room itself or borne in through 
the open window, organic excitations of various kinds. 
I could easily let my mind wander; I could lapse into 
reminiscence, or give the rein to my imagination. Yet 
I am perfectly well able to ignore all these distractions, 
and to concentrate upon my self-imposed task. Surely, 
says common sense, surely the whole situation implies 
a selective and spontaneous mental activity; I give 
my attention, of my own accord, to a certain topic that I 
have myself chosen ; I could, if I liked, attend to some- 
thing wholly different. That is the nature of attention 
as it is viewed by common sense. 

Let us see, however, how things look when we try 
to describe attention, without making any effort to 
interpret or explain it. Suppose that, as I sit writing 
this paragraph, I am called to the telephone, or am in- 
terrupted by the entrance of a friend. My attention 
is thus diverted to a new object. What happens? 
Something happens that we can only describe as a shift 
of the vividness of our mental processes. A moment 
ago, my psychological ideas were vivid, set (as it were) 
in the focus of attention, while all other ideas and per- 



92 Attention 

ceptions were dim and marginal; now the incoming 
ideas — my friend's business or the subject of the mes- 
sage — drive to the front ; they in their turn become 
vivid and focal, while the psychological ideas, just 
lately central and dominant, fall back, along with the 
perception of my sensory surroundings, into the dim 
background. Attention, therefore, if we consider it 
purely descriptively, hinges not upon mental activity, but 
upon the vividness of mental processes; and the state of 
attention may be described as a certain pattern or ar- 
rangement of mental processes; whenever our experi- 
ence shows the pattern of vivid centre and dim back- 
ground, of bright focus and obscure margin, then we have 
attention before us. 

What, then, is vividness? The answer has been 
given already (p. 66) : vividness is one of the universal 
aspects or attributes of sensation. Just as all sensations 
vary in intensity, so do all sensations vary in vividness. 
If you want a more positive answer ; if you want to 
know how precisely vividness ' feels ' in experience ; 
Observe your mental processes now, as you are puzzling 
over this book ; the difference between foreground and 
background, focus and margin, — between the dominant 
ideas aroused by what you read, and the obscure per- 
ceptions derived from your surroundings, — will show 
itself at any rate in the rough. Be careful not to con- 
fuse vividness with intensity: when you are listening 
intently for a very faint sound, the sound, as it comes, 
is the most vivid experience you have, although it is 
near the lower limit of intensity ; and when you are ab- 
sorbed in your work, the sound of the dinner-gong in the 



§ 2o. The Development of Attention 93 

hall may be very dim and obscure, although it is loud 
enough to be heard all over the house. Be careful, too, 
not to confuse sensory vividness with definiteness of mean- 
ing (p. 29). A patch of colour in an oil-painting may 
strongly attract your attention, may thus be extremely 
vivid, and may yet be altogether unintelligible; and 
another patch of colour, that you have passed over with 
' half a glance ' and that remains permanently in the 
background of experience, may carry the perfectly 
definite meaning of a dead soldier. Differences of 
vividness are neither differences of strong and weak in 
sensation, nor of distinct and indistinct in understanding ; 
they are more like differences of robust and weakly, or 
of self-assertive and retiring. 

These preliminary remarks are, perhaps, enough to show 
the nature of the problem that attention sets to a scientific 
psychology. We shall be concerned with sensory vivid- 
ness; we have to find out under what circumstances 
a sensation or image becomes vivid, and under what 
circumstances it becomes obscure; we have to trace 
the pattern of attention in greater detail and with more 
accuracy; we have to ask how many sensations may 
be vivid at the same time, and how long they remain 
vivid; and so on. We must keep the common-sense 
view always in mind, so that the scientific alternative 
stands out clearly and distinctly against it ; and we must 
take scientific account of all that common sense lays 
down. 

§ 20. The Development of Attention. — If we con- 
sider a large number of cases of attention, we find that 



94 Attention 

they fall into three great groups ; and each one of these 
groups seems to represent a stage in the development of 
mind at large, a level of mental evolution. We speak 
accordingly of primary, of secondary, and of derived 
primary attention. Let us consider them in order. 

(i) Primary attention. — There are certain classes 
of stimuli that force attention upon us ; they take us by 
storm, and we can offer no resistance ; when they appear, 
we must attend, whatever our preoccupation may be. 
Intensive stimuli belong to this class : very loud sounds, 
very bright lights, strong tastes and smells, severe press- 
ures, extreme temperatures, intense pains, one and all 
take possession of us, dominate us in their own right. 
A stimulus that is often repeated is also likely to attract 
the attention, even if at first it went unremarked. Sud- 
den stimuli, and sudden changes of stimulus, have the 
same effect. So with movement : the animal or bird 
that crosses the landscape, the melody that rises and 
falls to a steady accompaniment, the insect that crawls 
over our hand as we lie on the grass, all alike con- 
strain our attention. A novel stimulus has the same 
power; it stands alone and unrelated; it startles or 
arrests us. 

Here then is a fairly long list — high intensity, repe- 
tition, suddenness, movement, novelty — of controls 
to which the human organism is subject. Let any one 
of them come into play, and the corresponding sensation 
is made vivid, shoots to the focus, engrosses us. We may 
very quickly shake off the control, and return to the 
business that it interrupted ; but we cannot altogether 
escape it. The irresistible appeal of these various modes 



§ 20. The Development of Attention 95 

of stimulation shows us attention at its first develop- 
mental level. 

(2) Secondary attention. — This casual and forced 
attention is not, however, what we ordinarily mean 
when we speak of ' giving attention ' to something. We 
mean rather the sustained attention that we pay to a 
task, a lecture, a puzzle; we often mean an attention 
that goes against the grain, in which we seem to do the 
forcing, holding our mind by main force upon a tedious 
and uninteresting subject. Is not this secondary atten- 
tion very different from primary attention ? Let us see. 

If you think how many sense-organs man has, all of 
them open to manifold stimulation at the same time; 
and if you think, further, how many different lines of 
interest man has, all of them likely to bring up ideas of 
memory or ideas of imagination; you will realise that 
only very powerful stimuli, those that make an unescape- 
able biological appeal to the organism, can compel atten- 
tion — that is, can thrust their sensations to the focus — 
as if in disregard of competition. Such stimuli are hors 
de concours; all the rest have to face their rivals. This 
fact gives us the answer to our question. Secondary 
attention is in reality nothing else than a conflict of 
nerve-forces, each one of which, if it were acting alone, 
would make its sensation or image the most vivid bit of 
experience at the moment, but each one of which is con- 
tinually checked and thwarted by other forces that are urging 
their own sensations or images to the front. We might 
say, in brief, that secondary attention is a conflict of 
two or more primary attentions ; but we must remember 
that the actual fighting is done in the nervous system ; 



96 Attention 

we shall say more of that presently. We can observe 
some part of this struggle ; our mind wanders, our eye 
is caught by some chance movement and we lose the 
thread of our work, we surprise ourselves thinking of 
something else, we look at our watch to see how the hour 
is going; in a word, the focal processes are instable; 
now one and now another perception or idea becomes 
more vivid than the rest ; and the continual shift of 
vividness is proof of the conflict of the underlying nerve- 
forces. 

And the outcome? The outcome is that the stronger 
side always wins. Not necessarily the stronger side as 
we observe it; there may be a more impressive array 
of ideas on the side that finally gives way ; but the side 
'that has the stronger nerve-forces. It is quite certain 
that nervous forces or tendencies — think of the force of 
habit ! — may guide and direct the course of our thoughts, 
even though they do not themselves contribute to thought, 
even though (that is) they have no sensory or imaginal 
correlates. We shall have more to say of these guiding 
tendencies later ; meantime let us give an illustration 
of their power. Suppose that an observer comes into 
the laboratory to take part in a certain experiment, and 
that the experimenter carefully explains to him what 
he is to do. The next day he comes again, and the ex- 
planation is repeated. The next day he comes again; 
this time the experimenter says nothing; the experi- 
ment just goes on in the usual way ; and so on the fol- 
lowing days. Suppose, however, that on the twentieth 
day the experimenter says : ■ Are you thinking about 
what I told you to do? ' The observer, fearing that 



§ 20. The Development of Attention 97 

he has done wrong, and feeling very repentant, says : 
■ No ! to tell the truth I had forgotten all about it ; it 
had absolutely gone out of my mind ; have I been making 
mistakes ? ' He had not made any mistake ; but his 
reply shows that a certain tendency, impressed upon his 
nervous system by the experimenter's original explana- 
tion, had been effective to direct his ideas long after 
the idea of the explanation itself had disappeared. 
And what happens here, in a few days' work in the labor- 
atory, is happening every day of our lives in the wider 
experience outside of the laboratory. 

We see, therefore, that there is nothing spontaneous 
or active about secondary attention. It is merely 
primary attention over again, but primary attention 
under difficulties; it is a direct consequence of the multi- 
plication of perceptions and ideas, and of the complexity 
of the nervous system. 

(3) Derived primary attention. — One of the strongest 
proofs that there is no real difference between primary 
and secondary attention is that, in course of time, these 
difficulties vanish. Habit, as we say, becomes second 
nature ; the thoughts that at first moved haltingly and 
with all sorts of interruption gradually become absorb- 
ing; work that was once done with pains and labour 
grows fascinating, and makes an unquestioned demand 
upon us. So the period of struggle ends, and we slip 
back again into primary attention; only this derived form 
is controlled, not by the great biological stimuli, but by 
impressions that fit in with our acquired interests. The 
collector, the inventor, the expert are roused to keen at- 
tention by stimuli which the rest of the world pass with- 



98 Attention 

out special notice. Most of the striking coincidences of 
life are accounted for by this law; you are thinking 
about certain things, and something happens that, 
because you are thus thinking and because it is akin 
to the subject of your thought, captures your attention. 
' What an amazing coincidence ! ' you cry ; but if you 
had been occupied with some other topic, there would 
have been no coincidence. The man in Mr. Kipling's 
story who wondered, years after the event, ' how in the 
world he could have written such good stuff as that', had 
written under this same law of attention ; for when you 
are thoroughly absorbed in a subject, relevant facts 
and ideas crowd upon you ; the mind stands open to 
them, while it is fast locked against the irrelevant ; and 
you surpass yourself. There is, to be sure, another side 
to the picture ; the enthusiastic adoption of a belief 
or theory throws into brilliant relief all the facts that 
tell in its favour, but blinds you to the considerations 
that make against it. 

In sum, then, attention appears in the human mind 
at three stages of development : as primary attention, 
determined by any stimulus that is biologically powerful ; 
as secondary attention, during which a perception or 
idea dominates the mind in face of opposition ; and as 
derived primary attention, when this perception or idea 
has gained practically undisputed ascendency over its 
rivals. Looking at life in the large, we may say that 
the period of training or education is a period of second- 
ary attention, and that the following period of mastery 
and achievement is a period of derived primary attention. 
Looking at experience more in detail, we see thatedu- 



§ 2i. The Nature of Attention 99 

cation itself consists, psychologically, in an alternation 
of the two attentions ; habit is made the basis of further 
acquisition, and acquisition, gained with effort, passes 
in its turn into habit ; the cycle recurs, so long as the 
nervous system remains plastic. Secondary attention 
thus appears as a stage of transition, of conflict, of waste 
of nervous energy, though it appears also as the necessary 
preliminary to a stage of real knowledge. Meanwhile 
and all the while there is no escape from interruption 
by the original primary attention ; but the interruptions 
grow less and less disturbing as civilisation proceeds. 

§ 21. The Nature of Attention. — Our next task, in 
the words of p. 93, is to trace the pattern of attention, to 
describe as accurately as possible the arrangement of 
our vivid and obscure sensations. Notice that, in 
popular parlance, attention covers only the vivid pro- 
cesses of the moment; psychologically, however, the 
term includes both the vivid and the obscure, those that 
we are ' distracted from ' as well as those that we are 
' attending to.' This being understood, we may at- 
tempt a description. 

It seems that, in most cases, the state of attention is 
twofold and only twofold. There is a cluster of sensa- 
tions at the centre, all of approximately the same vivid- 
ness, and there is a mass of sensations in the background, 
all of approximately the same obscurity. Suppose that 
you are looking at one of the puzzle-pictures that are 
published in certain magazines, — trying to find a face 
outlined in the branches of a tree. At first, the whole 
picture is vivid, and the rest of your experience is obscure. 



ioo Attention 

Suddenly you find what you are seeking; and what 
happens? In all likelihood, the picture drops with a 
jerk into the general dimness of the background, while 
the face that you have discovered stands out by itself 
in all imaginable vividness ; you forget the picture, and 
see nothing but the face. The state of attention, then, 
in this its usual form, may be represented by two con- 
centric circles ; a small inner circle stands for the focus 
of attention, a large outer circle circumscribes its mar- 
gin. There is experimental evidence that, when our 
sensations are thus arranged, their vividness and obscur- 
ity are, as the arithmetics say, inversely proportional; 
the more vivid the central processes, the more obscure are 
the marginal; or, in untechnical language, the more we 
are concentrated upon any one thing, the less liable are 
we to distraction by other things. This twofold arrange- 
ment seems to be, for most of us, the regular pattern 
of attention ; but certain observations in the laboratory, 
which are borne out by statements in various text-books 
of psychology, make it practically certain that there is 
another ', less frequent and more complicated type of arrange- 
ment. Here the picture does not drop clear down into 
the background, when the face is found, but remains 
poised somewhere between focal vividness and marginal 
obscurity ; so that three degrees of vividness — some- 
times even four have been reported — may be dis- 
tinguished in one and the same state of attention. In 
such cases, attention must be represented by three or 
four concentric circles ; the inner and the outer still show 
the focus and margin of the total state ; the others indi- 
cate that there are sensations present whose vividness 



§ 21. The Nature of Attention 101 

lies somewhere between those extremes. Whether the 
focal processes suffer from the rivalry of the moderately 
vivid sensations ; whether, that is, attention in its three- 
fold or fourfold pattern is necessarily, even at the best, 
of a lower degree than the best attention of the twofold 
kind, we do not know. 

Our description of attention is so far complete; but 
there are two further questions that naturally occur. 
Do we not attend to what ' interests ' us ? In that 
case, however, attention must imply feeling. And is 
not sustained attention tiring? In that case, attention 
would seem to imply muscular sensation. These are 
undoubtedly points to be considered, and we must try 
to get at the facts. Are feeling and kincesthesis necessary 
in attention, or are they merely chance accompaniments 
of the attentive state? 

It all depends upon the stage of development at which 
attention appears. At first, in primary attention, the 
organism perceived the strong or sudden or novel or mov- 
ing thing, as sight or sound or touch, and also felt it, 
as disturbing or startling or surprising ; attention implied 
a sense-feeling. At the same time, the organism took 
up an attitude to the stimulus, in the literal sense ; faced 
it, as peering and listening and frightened animals face 
such stimuli to-day. At this stage, then, the shift of 
vividness is always accompanied both by feeling and by 
sensations, — sensations due to internal bodily changes 
and to muscular attitude. Then comes secondary 
attention, with its conflict between various claimants 
for the inner circle of attention ; and the conflicting 
stimuli will, naturally, arouse a medley of sense-feelings 



102 Attention 

and set up a struggle of more or less incompatible motor 
attitudes. In civilised man, the scene of the conflict has 
been largely transferred from perception to idea ; but 
the effort that we make when we apply ourselves to a task, 
the difficulty that we have in settling down, the fatigue that 
results from sustained work upon a difficult theme, all 
these things are reminders of the general uneasiness and 
restlessness that characterise secondary attention at the 
perceptive level. Only when we come to derived pri- 
mary attention do feeling and kinaesthesis cease to be 
necessary factors in the attentive state. What we call 
mechanical, habitual, expert, professional attention 
means extremely vivid experience ; but it need not in- 
volve either feeling or kinesthetic sensation. Attention is 
no longer turbid with organic processes ; the stream 
of mind has cleared itself. Common sense would say, 
and rightly, that a cool and critical poise has replaced 
the older animal excitement, and would emphasize the 
value of this change. We do not question the value ; 
but we are at the end of our psychological enquiry when 
we have shown what the change in experience actually 
is, and how it is brought about. 

But are we at the end? Should we not say something 
about inattention, which in everyday life we take to be 
the opposite of attention? have we not still to describe 
the inattentive state? No: in the normal waking life 
there is, in strictness, no such thing as inattention. We 
give that name to an attention which is directed upon 
what we regard as an improper object. Trie inattentive 
person is merely attending to something else ; the pat- 
tern remains the same. It is possible that, in certain 



§ 22. The Experimental Study of Attention 103 

abnormal cases, all mental processes alike run their 
course in relative obscurity; but even here we are not 
dealing with inattention ; there is some weakness or 
obstruction of nerve-forces, which prevents sensations 
from reaching their full normal vividness. 

§22. The Experimental Study of Attention. — The 

question of the range of attention, — how many sensa- 
tions or images may occupy the focus at the same time, 
— was canvassed in the Middle Ages : witness our 
quotation from St. Thomas. The first appeal to experi- 
ment seems to have been made, in the late thirties of the 
past century, by the Scottish philosopher Sir Wm. Hamil- 
ton. " You can easily make the experiment for your- 
selves," Hamilton tells his students, " but you must 
beware of grouping the objects into classes. If you 
throw a handful of marbles on the floor, you will find it 
difficult to view at once more than six, or seven at most, 
without confusion ; but if you group them into twos, or 
threes, or rives, you can comprehend as many groups 
as you can units." The experiment is not very rigorous ; 
but more accurate work on the subject shows that 
Hamilton was not far wrong. If a field of simple visual 
stimuli is shown for a brief time, the practised observer 
is in fact able to grasp six of them; and if familiar groups 
are substituted for the separate stimuli (short words for 
letters, or playing-card fives for single dots), the range 
of visual attention remains the same. 

In this case the stimuli are presented together in space; 
they may also be presented in time. If you listen to a 
metronome beating, say, 15 in the minute, you will be 



104 Attention 

able with practice to hold six successive strokes in the 
focus of attention, but not more ; if you try to group 
the seventh stroke with the preceding six you become 
confused ; the series breaks, and cannot be welded to- 
gether again. As the speed of the metronome is in- 
creased, the beats fall of themselves into groups of twos 
and threes ; and you can still grasp and hold six of these 
rhythmical impressions. When the speed has reached 
some 200 in the minute, the rhythmical grouping be- 
comes more complicated ; as many as eight single beats 
may be bound together in a rhythmical unit; and the 
attention is adequate, again after practice, to five of 
these complex groups ; the focus comprises no less than 
forty separate strokes of the pendulum. This result, 
we may note, agrees very well with the canons of musical 
and poetic composition. The musical phrase never con- 
tains more than six measures, and the poetical line or verse 
never contains more than six feet; a seven-measured 
phrase or a seven-footed line falls to pieces, ceases to be 
unitary. The rhythmical wholes of a higher order, the 
period in music and the stanza or strophe in poetry, 
never contain more than five phrases or verses; as a 
rule, neither contains more than four. 

So much for range; we turn to consider duration; 
how long can a sensation maintain itself at the focus? 
how long can we attend to a single simple impression? 
The early experiments on this question were most in- 
genious. The observer was required to look steadily 
at a little disc of very light grey, shown against a white 
background, or to listen intently to the very faint sound 
of a stream of fine sand ; and the theory was that, since 



§ 22. The Experimental Study of Attention 105 

these stimuli were barely distinguishable at the outset, 
any lapse of attention, any decline in the vividness of 
the sensations, would blot them out altogether; they 
would disappear. The sensations did disappear, after 
a few seconds ; and then, after another few seconds, 
came back; and so the conclusion was drawn that 
attention fluctuates, that we can attend to a single 
simple impression only for a few seconds at a time. No 
doubt attention fluctuates ; but these experiments, un- 
fortunately, are not to the point ; for the disappearance 
and reappearance of the sensations can be accounted for 
by changes in the sense-organ, by adaptation, by twitch- 
ing of the eyes, and so on. Other experiments have 
therefore been suggested. If we have recourse to smell 
and touch, we find that the course of adaptation to an 
odour, or to the pressure of a small weight laid upon the 
skin, may be followed attentively, without noticeable 
fluctuation, for two or three minutes ; and the observers 
report that they could have kept up their attention still 
longer. Again, however, objection may be raised ; for 
as adaptation advances, the sensation grows fainter and 
fainter; and the attention is thus continually spurred 
to hold it ; the observer is not attending to an unchang- 
ing process, but is sharpening his attention to something 
that becomes more and more difficult to fix. Here we 
are, for the present, at a standstill. There is no doubt 
that attention fluctuates; the bare fact is plain enough in 
our everyday experience ; but we have no experimental 
ground for a more definite statement. 

Experiments have also been made to determine the 
bodily changes which occur in the state of secondary 



106 Attention 

attention (p. 102). It is found that the volume of the 
brain increases, while the volume of the arm (save in 
experiments in which tactual stimuli are employed) de- 
creases. Breathing becomes shallower ; and expiration 
becomes relatively longer as compared with inspiration, 
so that the quotient /: E, time of inspiration divided 
by time of expiration, becomes less. There are changes 
in the rate of pulse ; but they seem to differ according as 
the attention is 'sensory' or 'intellectual,' — according, 
that is, as the focal process is a sensation or something 
more complicated, a perception or idea : in sensory 
attention the pulse beats more slowly, in intellectual 
attention more quickly, than its normal rate. It is 
natural that the blood, in attention, should be drawn 
from the members to the brain ; it is natural, too, that 
this rule should be broken when a limb is itself the ' ob- 
ject ' of attention ; and we all know that there is a ten- 
dency, when we are attentive, to hold the breath ; so that 
the changes of volume and breathing are not surprising. 
Nothing more can be said at present of the changes in 
rate of pulse. 

§23. The Nervous Correlate of Attention. — It re- 
mains to say a word about the nature of the nerve-forces 
(§20) which underlie attention. Physiologists tell 
us that one nervous process may influence another in 
two opposite ways : by helping and by hindering, or, 
in technical terms, by reinforcement and inhibition. 
Let us take an elementary example of what they mean. 
Suppose that a frog has been reduced, by the removal 
of its cerebral hemispheres, to a mere nerve-and-muscle 



§ 23. The Nervous Correlate of Attention 107 

machine ; it lives, but it cannot sense or feel, and it 
does not move ' of its own accord.' If, now, a weak 
pressure is applied to the frog's hind foot, there is no 
visible response ; the limb remains passive. But if 
at the same moment a light is flashed into the eye, the 
leg-muscles may be thrown into strong contraction. 
Here we must suppose that the two nervous processes, 
from skin and eye, have in some way helped each other ; 
there is nervous reinforcement. If, again, a pressure 
is applied to a certain part of the frog's body, the animal 
croaks. If a strong pressure is applied to another 
part of the body, it replies by a contraction of the mus- 
cles. If, however, the two pressures are applied to- 
gether, the frog does not both croak and move ; it does 
neither ; there is no response to the stimuli. Here, 
therefore, we must suppose that the two nervous pro- 
cesses interfere with each other ; there is nervous inhibi- 
tion. 

It seems plain that these two influences are at work 
among the nervous processes correlated with attention. 
The vivid sensations at the focus are sensations whose 
corresponding nervous processes have been reinforced, and 
the dim sensations of the background are sensations whose 
corresponding nervous processes have been inhibited. No 
doubt, the distribution of these forces, in a given in- 
stance, is really a matter of degree; the reinforced ner- 
vous process receives more reinforcement than inhibi- 
tion, and conversely. No doubt, also, the removal of an 
existing inhibition may produce the same effect as the 
addition of a reinforcement, and conversely. We are 
still too much in the dark as regards the intimate char- 



108 Attention 

acter of the nerve-forces, we know too little of their 
actual course as nervous function in nervous structure, 
to be able properly to distinguish cases. There is evi- 
dence that inhibition may be extraordinarily effective : 
thus the late Dr. W. B. Carpenter relates that he " has 
frequently begun a lecture, whilst suffering neuralgic 
pain so severe as to make him apprehend that he would 
find it impossible to proceed ; yet no sooner has he, by a 
determined effort, fairly launched himself into the stream 
of thought, than he has found himself continuously 
borne along without the least distraction, until the end 
has come, and the attention has been released ; when 
the pain has recurred with a force that has overmastered 
all resistance, making him wonder how he could ever 
have ceased to feel it." Reinforcement also may be 
carried to a high degree : how else could the listener 
follow the part assigned to some special group of instru- 
ments in the orchestra, while he still hears the full har- 
mony? and how, still more, could the conductor single 
out the particular violin-player, who has mistaken a 
note, from the group of sixteen who are all playing pre- 
cisely the same part? 

We may suppose, therefore, that one and the same 
pattern of attention is due to very varied combinations of 
reinforcing and inhibiting nerve-forces. How then shall 
we account for the fact that, in any given instance, 
vividness and obscurity are inversely proportional 
(p. ioo) ? The reason seems to be — though we could 
not have learned it from the experiments on the frog — 
that a reinforcement and a corresponding inhibition 
always go hand in hand ; you cannot reinforce one 



§ 23. The Nervous Correlate of Attention 109 

process without at the same time inhibiting others, 
and you cannot inhibit without reinforcing. The 
nerve-forces are thus interlinked or, as we might say, 
double-acting. We are struck by the inhibition in Car- 
penter's case ; but the case has another side ; for the 
more successful the inhibition of the neuralgia, the better 
was the lecture delivered. So we are struck by the 
reinforcement in the case of the conductor ; but that, 
too, has another side ; for the keener his attention to the 
music, the more oblivious is he of his other surround- 
ings. We shall come back later to this notion of the 
interlinking of the nerve-forces, and shall indicate the 
evidence upon which it rests. 

In summary, we may repeat our general statement 
that vividness is paralleled by nervous reinforcement, and 
obscurity by nervous inhibition. Only we must realise 
that the processes actually going on in the brain may 
be very complicated ; many separate forces may be at 
work behind the single mental pattern, and their action 
may be brought about in different ways ; and we must 
remember also that every one of these separate forces 
is double-faced, reinforcing and inhibiting at the same 
time. 



no Attention 

Questions and Exercises 

(i) "So numerous and varied are the ramifications of 
attention, that we find it defined by competent authorities 
as a state of muscular contraction and adaptation, as a pure 
mental activity, as an emotion or feeling, and as a change in 
the clearness of ideas. Each of the definitions can be justified 
from the facts, if we put the chief emphasis now upon one 
phase and now upon another of its varied expressions " 
(W. B. Pillsbury, Attention, 1908, i). Discuss this passage. 

(2) Give instances, from your own experience, of the three 
levels of attention. Trace the development (still from your 
own experience) of derived primary from secondary attention. 

(3) Describe carefully the attitudes (a) of the scout 
(secondary visual attention) and (b) of the eavesdropper 
(secondary auditory attention). How do you account for 
their difference? 

(4) A child that has fallen and hurt itself stops crying if 
you offer it a toy; a soldier who in the heat of battle has 
received a serious wound may know nothing of it, and may 
go on fighting till he drops from exhaustion ; many a martyr 
has suffered at the stake with calm serenity. How far are 
these cases explicable by the laws of attention ? 

(5) Criticise Sir Wm. Hamilton's experiment. Do not 
be satisfied till you have found several reasons for distrusting 
its result. 

(6) Do the lower animals ever give evidence of derived 
primary attention? 

(7) You can follow the movement of a single instrument in 
the orchestra better, when it has been playing a solo before, 
than when the whole group of instruments begin together. 
Why is this? Give other instances of the same law. 

(8) It has been proposed to measure the degree of attention 
by measuring the degree of effort which accompanies it. 
What have you to say to the proposal? 

(9) How could you tell, by outward observation, whether 



References in 

a child is attentive or inattentive? and whether it is ade- 
quate to its task or is in difficulties? Do not just list the 
symptoms ; make your answer psychological. 

(10) Determine the range of attention (a) by help of an 
ordinary metronome, set at various rates. You must not 
count the beats, since every count would mean a separate 
attention. Determine the range also (b) by help of the letter- 
diagram and cardboard screen figured by W. Wundt, An In- 
troduction to Psychology, 191 2, 19. Notice the remark 
(p. 23) that the experimenter must practise covering and un- 
covering the diagram. 

(11) Paint or paste a small disc of light grey on a white 
cardboard ground. Move so far away that the spot is only 
just distinguishable. Call out Gone! and Back! as it dis- 
appears and reappears, and have the times noted on the 
seconds-dial of a watch. Explain the fluctuation, in your own 
words, as due to adaptation and eye-movement. Can you de- 
vise a simple method of showing (by means of the negative 
after-image) that unnoticed eye-movements really occur? 

(12) St. Thomas asks whether the mind can grasp more 
than one thing at a time ; and replies that it can, if the various 
things are regarded as making up a single whole, but that it 
cannot, if they are regarded in their variety and particularity. 
Can you put all this into psychological language? And can 
you find any difference between St. Thomas' question and 
our own question as to the range of attention? 

References 

Sir W. Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics, i., 1859, 254; 
W. B. Carpenter, Principles of Mental Physiology, 1888, 
ch. iii. ; W. James, Principles of Psychology, i., 1890, ch. xi. ; 
W. Wundt, Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology, 
1896, Lect. xvii. ; Outlines of Psychology, 1907, § 15 ; W. B. 
Pillsbury, Attention, 1908; E. B. Titchener, Lectures on 
the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention, 1908, 
Lects. v.-viii. ; Text-book of Psychology, 1910, 265 ff. 



CHAPTER V 
Perception and Idea 

If we cross the fingers, a single object beneath them appears to be 
two ; and yet we do not say that there are two, for sight is more decisive 
than touch ; but if touch were our only sense, our judgment would de- 
clare that the single object is two. — Aristotle 

§ 24. The Problem in General. — The chapters on 
the mental elements — sensation, simple image, feeling 
— have made you acquainted with the results of psy- 
chological analysis ; it was only occasionally that you 
were asked to analyse for yourself. Henceforth we 
shall be dealing with experiences that offer themselves 
for analysis ; with experiences that, however simple they 
may at first sight appear, turn out on investigation to 
be complex. We shall thus be following the example 
of those men who, long centuries ago, tried to bring 
order into mental phenomena and to establish a science 
of mind. We have an enormous advantage; for they 
were working in the dark, and we are working in the 
light of their discoveries. Still, our procedure will be 
the same as theirs ; and the change of work brings with 
it certain difficulties that you must realise at the outset 
and be ready to face. Well begun is half done. 

First of all, then, your reading henceforth will be 
more difficult, because you will have to keep more things 
in mind. The analysis even of so comparatively simple 



§ 24". The Problem in General 113 

a thing as a perception or idea cannot be performed in 
one breath. A knot in a rope may be beautifully simple, 
and yet you may spend a week in learning it ! Secondly, 
the examples chosen by the author may not be just the 
right examples for you ; even perceptions and ideas, 
again, differ a good deal in different minds ; and an ex- 
ample that is illuminating to one reader may leave 
another quite blind. So you must look for your own 
examples in your own experience. Thirdly, you have 
now to wrestle with the problem of meaning (p. 26) ; for 
all perceptions and ideas, and all our still more compli- 
cated experiences, mean something; a perception is 
always the perception of a tree or a wedding or what not ; 
and an idea too is always the idea of something, whether 
of the landing of Columbus or of the quarrels of the gods 
in Homer. You must get clear, then, about the psy- 
chology of meaning. Fourthly, these concrete experi- 
ences that you are to analyse have a long history; and 
in seeking their nervous correlates we shall be obliged, 
oftentimes, to go far back, even beyond the individual, 
to the development of the race. In doing this we do 
not change the problem of psychology (p. 18), but we 
enlarge our view of it ; a mere reference to the organ 
of sense or the present condition of the nervous system 
is no longer enough. 

All this means, in summary, that we are passing from 
the abstract to the concrete, from the meaningless to 
the meaningful, from the simple to the complex. We 
still keep to our scientific point of view, and we still 
employ our scientific method. The change is not in 
us, who are psychologising, but in our subject-matter ; 



ii4 Perception and Idea 

the plot begins to thicken ; and this growing complexity 
of subject-matter naturally makes increasing demand 
upon our scientific resources. 

§ 25. The Analysis of Perception and Idea. — Sen- 
sations and simple images can hardly occur, by them- 
selves alone, in our everyday experience. The prac- 
tised psychologist may be able to focalise a sensation, 
to make it so vivid that it stands out almost as it would 
under the experimental control of the laboratory; but 
his is an exceptional case. The units of our daily expe- 
rience are rather such things as the sound of the piano 
in the next room, the sight of the tree budding just 
outside the window, the memory of last winter's snow- 
piles, the forecast of to-night's Pathetic Symphony; 
that is, they are perceptions and ideas. Notice that 
they come to us in the first place as units, as wholes ; 
they show no lines of natural cleavage ; they are unitary 
and self-contained. Yet they are not psychologically 
simple ; if they were, we should never have lit upon 
sensations and simple images. All perceptions and 
ideas may be analysed. 

A typical perception resolves, to begin with, into a 
number of sensations. The sound of the piano is, after 
all, the sound of certain compound tones, played to- 
gether and in succession ; and the sight of the tree is an 
arrangement of colours. The characteristic part of a 
perception, then, the part that we may conveniently 
call its core or nucleus, may thus be analysed into sen- 
sations. Only the core, however ; for the sensations are 
supplemented, secondly, by various images. The sound 



§ 25. The Analysis of Perception and Idea 115 

comes to us as the sound of the piano, the instrument 
of that familiar look; and we may have an imaginal 
hint of the child playing, of the score, of its special 
difficulties, of all sorts of related things. The tree, too, 
is that tree, the familiar cherry that the caterpillars 
infest so badly, that grew so much last year, that will 
presently cut off the view across the street, that very 
likely will interfere with the beech. Remember that 
these are the author's instances, and that you must 
replace them by your own ! The point is that the 
complement of images is there ; and you will notice 
that it is not stable ; it may be full or scant, and it may 
lead the mind this way or that; but, whatever it be, 
it puts more into the perception than the sensory 
stimuli can account for ; we perceive more than we hear 
or see. 

Yes, and we perceive more than is furnished us by 
sensations and images. It is a fact (which you will 
better understand presently) that every perception is 
shaped and moulded by the action of nerve-forces which 
show themselves neither in sensation nor in image. The 
nervous system, whether by racial heritage or by indi- 
vidual habit, meets its impressions halfway, and throws 
them into certain customary forms. We take both the 
tree and the piano to be real things, and we take them 
to be things that occupy real space ; we perceive them as 
objects of the outside world, and we perceive them as 
solid or space-filling. We do this because we have a 
natural and ingrained tendency to cast our perceptions 
into the forms of e thing ' and ' space ' ; and this ten- 
dency of the nervous system does its work automatically ; 



n6 Perception and Idea 

it has no correlate of sensation or image ; but it is none 
the less effective, so to say, behind the sensations and 
the images, in determining the perception. You must 
just accept this statement now; it will become clearer 
later on. 

A typical idea, in the same way, has a core or nucleus 
of images. Last winter's snow may come to us in many 
different ways, because our equipment of images is 
very variable (pp. 75 f.) ; it will come to most, perhaps, 
as a visual picture, an uneven spread of white, with 
streaks of grey-brown on the peaks and along the val- 
leys, honeycombed and broken from some partial 
thaw. To-night's music will come, possibly, as the 
sound of the opening adagio measures, or of some theme 
from the allegro. Here again, however, the nucleus 
has its surroundings ; other images cluster about it; 
we recall the day so-and-so got his feet wet, or the big 
fall of that December Thursday; we see our place in 
the concert-hall, or hope that this time the tympani 
will be in tune. Nor is the idea altogether a matter of 
images. We can hardly think of those opening meas- 
ures without kinesthetic sensations from the throat, 
or from some muscular beat of the rhythm; we can 
hardly think of getting our feet wet, or of seating our- 
selves in the hall, without some actual movement that 
arouses sensation. Find your own instances, once 
more, and do not trust the author ! You will find that 
the typical idea is thus in part sensation, just as the typi- 
cal perception is in part image. Finally, the idea, too, 
is subject to the pressure of the directive nerve-forces; 
it takes the same customary forms as the perception. 



§ 26. Meaning in Perception and Idea 117 

Columbus is thought of as a real person, acting in a real 
world of space and time; and Zeus as an imaginary 
person in an imaginary world; but there is no differ- 
ence in the form of the ideas, and no difference of form 
between these ideas and the perception of the stranger 
who has just passed the window. 

So we have the characteristic nucleus; the varying com- 
plement; and the brain-habit behind all. And if we can 
analyse the perception or idea, nucleus and surround- 
ings both, into its mental elements ; if we can say what 
nervous processes are correlated with these elementary 
mental processes; and if we can further establish the 
nature of the guiding and shaping nerve-forces; then 
our psychological account will be, in strictness, com- 
plete. Yet we shall have passed over something that, 
as we have ourselves admitted, is in everyday life most 
strikingly characteristic of these experiences ; the fact, 
namely, that they mean ; that our perception of the 
tree means the tree, is a perception of that tree, and our 
idea of snow means the snow, is an idea of that snow. 
What, then, from the psychological point of view, is this 
meaning? 

§ 26. Meaning in Perception and Idea. — We learned 
in § 6 that mental processes are not intrinsically mean- 
ingful, that meaning is not a constituent part of their 
nature. We have seen, indeed, that the whole notion 
of meaning is really foreign to science. When we ask, 
then, what meaning is, from the psychological point of 
view, are we not asking an irrelevant and unscientific 
question ? 



1 1 8 Perception and Idea 

Not necessarily. A science cannot free itself, offhand, 
from its own history ; and, historically, psychology has 
been much concerned with meaning. Moreover, mean- 
ing is of very great practical importance ; we communi- 
cate meanings, we apprehend meanings, we act upon 
meanings; and although science is not bound to treat 
only of what is practically important, yet it can hardly 
neglect a matter of great practical importance that 
comes its way. Our question, if we rephrase it a little, 
merely asks that a term, familiar to us in our daily life, 
be translated into the language of science; and if the 
translation out of common sense into science is to be 
made at all, psychology is the science in which the 
equivalent of meaning will be found. For these rea- 
sons we are justified in discussing the matter here ; and 
the question at issue — let us be quite clear about it 
— is this : What mental processes, in perception and 
idea, are the scientific equivalent of what we know in 
everyday life as meaning? what processes carry the 
meaning? 

The answer is that the processes which surround the 
nucleus carry the meaning. Psychologically regarded, 
meaning is always context; and the context is the fringe 
of related processes that gathers about the central group 
of sensations or images. Ordinarily, as our analysis 
has shown, the two come together; but they may be 
disjoined. When the word ' house ' becomes meaning- 
less with repetition (p. 26), it is because the bare sound 
grows more and more vivid and dominant ; like the nest- 
ling cuckoo, it drives out its normal associates ; and 
these associates, the carriers of its meaning, sink lower 



§ 26. Meaning in Perception and Idea no. 

and lower into the obscurity of the background. So the 
meaning, almost literally, drops off, falls away. When 
one and the same experience has different meanings, it 
is because the context varies; we read, for instance, 
that so-and-so received a warm welcome, and we put 
directly opposite interpretations on the words, accord- 
ing as so-and-so was friend or enemy. When we mis- 
take a meaning, it is because we supply a context of 
our own : what child, reading that " the quality of mercy 
is not strain'd," has not thought of mercy being wrung 
out through a strainer, as the cook wrings the water 
out of cottage-cheese in a muslin bag? The context 
of images is obvious ; the rain falls freely, like water 
poured through a sieve ; but what is strained comes out 
grudgingly in drops. When one and the same mean- 
ing attaches to several experiences, it is because these 
different experiences are received into the same context, 
or into a context so nearly the same that for practical 
purposes the differences disappear; for example, the 
experiences may be named, that is, may be received 
into a context of verbal ideas ; and verbal ideas tend 
to become stereotyped, as it were, into permanent 
groups. All the facts of § 6 are to be accounted 
for in this way, by the distinction of nucleus and 
context. 

Originally, we must suppose, meaning was carried ex- 
clusively by kinesthetic and organic sensations. Think 
of the animal that we pictured on p. 101 as startled by 
some sudden stimulus and as facing the stimulus by way 
of a bodily attitude ; the sensation is hemmed in, like 
a jewel in its setting, by the sensations of organic stir 



120 Perception and Idea 

and motor posture ; and these sensations give the mean- 
ing ; they cry out ' Danger ! ' ; they are the psycho- 
logical equivalent, the carriers, of that meaning ; with- 
out them the sensation would be meaningless. Mean- 
ing is thus older than the free image; and kinaesthesis is 
still, for many of us, the characteristic context, the com- 
mon denominator of our meanings ; we hinted at this 
role on p. 47. None the less, the development of free 
images, the images of memory and imagination, changes 
the whole situation ; kinaesthesis now has many rivals ; 
and it depends on our individual equipment of images, 
on our ' type of mind,' whether a meaning shall be 
carried by a quiver of the stomach or some muscular 
set, or whether it shall be carried by some complex of 
images. If we were to work out a great number of 
cases, we should probably find that any sensory or 
imaginal process whatsoever is able, in our adult human 
experience, to carry the meaning of any other. 

There is yet a further stage : a stage in which meaning 
is carried not by any sort of sensation or image, but simply 
and solely by physiological processes, by some set or dispo- 
sition of the brain. When the practised reader skims a 
number of pages in quick succession ; when the musi- 
cian renders a composition in the prescribed key; 
when an accomplished linguist shifts from one language 
to another as he turns to his right or left hand neighbour 
at a dinner table ; in cases of this kind there need be 
no discoverable context ; the stimuli press the button, 
and the brain, prepared by constant practice in the 
past, now does the rest. The experiences mean, posi- 
tively enough ; the ' sense ' of the pages is grasped, as 



§ 27. The Types of Perception 121 

the eye hurries over the lines ; the three flats on the staff 
set the player's hand and eye for the key of Et? ; the 
question put in French is suitably answered in the 
same language ; everything takes place as if there were 
a fringe of images that gave meaning to the bare per- 
ceptions; and yet imaginal fringe and kinesthetic set- 
ting may be conspicuous only by their absence. Of 
course, there has been context ; one does not learn 
French and German, or transpose on the piano, by gift 
of a ready-made nervous system ; even after years of 
work one may be a little uncertain of the German aux- 
iliaries, or have a repugnance to four sharps. The point 
is, however, that an habitual and often-repeated con- 
text does, presently, lapse altogether; the nucleus is 
not always supplemented ; the nervous system can now 
do, by a set or disposition that has no mental correlate, 
what it used to do by processes that had as accompani- 
ment the sensations or images of the context. 

It is plain, therefore, that perception and idea are not 
always so rich and complicated as we have described them; 
we spoke, for that very reason, of the ' typical ' percep- 
tion and idea. They range, according to their age and 
use, from the cluster of nuclear processes surrounded 
by a group of contextual associates, all under the guid- 
ance of a directive nerve-force, down to a mere rag 
and tag of sensory or imaginal process, wholly bare of 
associates, and dependent for its meaning upon some 
habitual nervous set. 

§ 27. The Types of Perception. — Our perceptions 
are based upon three of the attributes or aspects of sen- 



122 Perception and Idea 

sation : upon quality, upon duration, and upon exten- 
sion (p. 66). 

The quality of sensation has already been discussed. 
We may take, as instances of qualitative perception, 
the taste of coffee, the resistance of a jammed door, 
and the note of a musical instrument. The taste of 
coffee analyses into sensations of bitter, the real taste 
of the coffee-berry; of warmth; of pressure, the feel 
of the liquid in the mouth ; and of a peculiar fragrance, 
the odour of coffee. Along with these goes a colour, 
the clear or clouded brown of the coffee in the cup, 
and various other contextual processes. The resistance 
analyses into the qualities of pressure from the skin; 
of strain from the tendons of the arm ; and of pressure, 
or something akin to pressure, from the binding of the 
joints and the contraction of the muscles. There is prob- 
ably some organic stir; there is the sight of the door; 
and there may be a further context. The musical note 
analyses into fundamental tone and overtones, and into 
the noise characteristic of the instrument; the thud of 
the piano, the scrape of the violin, the pluck of the 
harp. The supplement is perhaps visual; but here, 
as in the other cases, verbal ideas may enter into the 
context; we may think 'Violin, of course.' All our 
qualitative perceptions are of this kind; they come to 
us as meaningful wholes, and they may be analysed 
into a number of sensory qualities, run or fused or 
blended together, and set in various contexts of asso- 
ciated processes. 

The attribute of duration has not yet been defined. 
It is the bare going on, going forward, keeping like 



§ 27. The Types of Perception 123 

itself, that may be observed in any and every sensation ; 
you recognise it most easily, perhaps, if you listen to a 
tone, or attend to the kinesthetic complex as you slowly 
extend your arm from the elbow. It is the elementary 
time-factor in all our perceptions of time, — in the per- 
ceptions of period, of interval, of rate, of rhythm, and 
so on; though in some of these perceptions it is over- 
laid and obscured by other factors. Qualitative per- 
ceptions undergo relatively little change, just because 
they are qualitative perceptions ; the best and easiest 
way to mean a quality is to be it ; the best way to mean 
the coffee-taste is to be the coffee-taste ; and so our 
perception of that taste remains practically the same all 
our life long. Time-perceptions, on the other hand, — 
and the same thing is true of space-perceptions, — 
change enormously; the nervous system finds all man- 
ner of short-cuts to the meaning of time ; and these 
short-cuts have to be ^practised, to be practised out, 
if we are to observe the perception in its original form. 
Thus, to take the simplest case, a period of time may 
seem long because the kinesthetic strain of waiting 
becomes intense, or because a great number of percep- 
tions and ideas occur during its course ; the strain and 
the number of ideas have come to mean length of time, 
and the primary experience of duration, so to say, 
drops out of sight. If, therefore, we wish our observers 
in the laboratory to compare periods of time ; if we wish 
to find out accurately what durations can be grasped 
by the attention and held in the memory ; then we must 
break them of these time-habits, and must somehow 
train them to disregard strain and to discard imagery. 



124 Perception and Idea 

We cannot often carry the unravelling of a perception 
to the very end, though we can go some distance behind 
the appearances of everyday life. 

The attribute of extension is the bare character of 
patch or spread that inheres in all sensations from eye 
and skin, and possibly also in kinesthetic and organic 
sensations. No point of light or pressure is so fine that 
it is not areal. Extension is the elementary space-factor 
in all our perceptions of space. It enters most obviously 
into the perception of surface, as duration enters most 
obviously into that of period ; but it is the basis also 
of our perceptions of form, size, distance, locality, direc- 
tion. Like duration, it is often obscured and overlaid 
by other factors. 

Here, however, you will raise an objection. Have 
we not said, on p. 115, that perception is shaped and 
moulded by nerve-forces that have no mental corre- 
lates ? and did we not take as an example the casting of 
perceptions into the forms of 'thing' and 'space'? 
How, then, can we now speak of perceptions of space? 
— Well, for one thing, there are various kinds of spatial 
perception ; and it will not do to assume that they are 
all alike a matter of brain-habit, without mental corre- 
late. Secondly, however, there is a difference between 
perceiving the piano or the tree as spatial, and turning 
our attention directly upon its spatial characters, its 
size or form, its distance or direction. In the latter 
case, we may rightly speak of a perception of space; 
we may so speak, even if the various kinds of spatial 
perception do turn out to be matters of brain-habit; 
and we must examine every kind for itself, precisely in 



§ 28. The Perception of Distance 125 

order to determine how far it is sensory and imaginal, 
and how far it is a form impressed on sensations and 
images by the trend of the processes in the brain. 

So the objection is answered. Coming back to the 
subject, we note that some of our more complex per- 
ceptions have a twofold basis : thus the perception of 
melody is at once qualitative and temporal, and the 
perception of movement is at once temporal and spatial. 
Nay more, the perception of a scene, a situation, an 
event, is threefold : qualitative, temporal and spatial ; 
think of a scene of grand opera, or of an accident on the 
street. In general, the analysis of these complex per- 
ceptions follows from that of the simpler modes, though 
every one of them has its own psychological problem. 

It may seem strange that we have not distinguished 
a group of perceptions based upon sensory intensity. 
The fact is, however, that while intensity enters into 
all sorts of perceptions (lemonade must not be too sour, 
the members of a rhythm must be variously accented, 
a distant sound is faint), it only rarely characterises a 
perception ; and when it does, the perception thus char- 
acterised belongs to one or other of the groups already 
mentioned. We say ' What a heavy child ! ' — but the 
perception of weight, like that of resistance, is itself 
qualitative. Or we say of a certain composer ' He al- 
ways overdoes the drums ! ' — but the drum-rhythm 
is itself a temporal perception. We cannot point, then, 
to a separate class of intensive perceptions. 

§ 28. The Perception of Distance. — A complete 
psychology of perception would contain an analytical 



126 Perception and Idea 

treatment, up to the limits of our present knowledge, of 
all the various perceptions, qualitative, temporal and 
spatial, as well as complex, that occur in experience. 
Such a treatment is here out of the question. We 
must pick and choose ; and as a sample of perception at 
large we shall consider the perception of distance. We 
seem, quite immediately and directly, to see distances ; 
we see that our friend is coming nearer, we see that he 
has passed the bridge, we see that he is entering the 
gate, we see when to shake hands with him. Yet there 
is no sensation of distance, and there is no specific stim- 
ulus to distance. What, then, really happens? 

In the first place, there are plenty of visual cues to 
distance. We take familiar things to be far off if they 
look small, and near by if they look large; the size of 
the men and vehicles in the street makes us realise the 
height of the building we are gazing down from. We 
take things to be far off, again, if they are hazy and bluish, 
near by if they are clearly outlined and varied in colour ; 
everyone knows or has read of the deceptive nearness of 
distant mountains in clear dry air. We notice the dis- 
tribution of light and shade ; a morning or evening land- 
scape, a shaded face or sphere, looks deeper, more solid, 
more plastic, than the landscape at high noon or the 
outline drawing. We notice the course of boundary 
lines and the visibility of surfaces ; that is nearer which 
cuts across the rest or blots part of it out ; the telephone 
wire is thus nearer than the elm, and the elm is nearer 
than the house. We notice the number of objects that 
the eye must traverse to arrive at its goal; and the 
more numerous the objects, the farther off do we take 



§ 28. The Perception of Distance 127 

the goal to be; the town looks near, we say, but there 
are all those fields, and the wood, and the churchyard, 
and half-a-dozen farmhouses to pass, and then the out- 
lying houses; it must be a good two miles. We get 
various hints from movement ; a crawling train or car 
is far away ; and if we are looking at a near object and 
move the head to one side, distant objects move in the 
same direction, while if we are looking at a far object 
and move the head, near objects go in the opposite 
direction; and so on. All these things — linear perspec- 
tive, aerial perspective, chiaroscuro, interposition, number, 
movement — are, however, secondary affairs ; they represent 
short-cuts to the meaning of distance (p. 123) ; they do 
not lead us to the perception of distance itself. At the 
same time, we should bear in mind that these secondary 
processes were there, ready to take up the burden of 
meaning, all the while that the perception was forming. 

Having thus cleared the ground, we naturally appeal 
to experiment; but unfortunately the first step that 
we take lands us in difficulties. It is found that, when 
all the cues above mentioned are ruled out, the estima- 
tion of distance is still possible ; and many psychologists 
believe that it depends upon kinsesthetic sensations 
set up in and about the eye. Each eyeball is slung in 
its orbit upon six muscles ; and the contraction of these 
muscles is, naturally, greater for convergence of the 
eyes upon near objects than for their convergence upon 
far ; so that the sensations of convergence seem fitted to 
play a part in the perception of distance. If only one 
eye is used, these sensations may be replaced by others, 
derived from the muscular system, within the eyeball, 



128 Perception and Idea 

that adjusts or accommodates the lens for clear vision 
at different objective distances. The sensations of 
accommodation, though, in ordinary binocular vision 
they are entirely subordinate to the sensations of con- 
vergence, can nevertheless — within a lesser range of 
distances — play the same part in perception. Unfor- 
tunately, as was hinted just now, the results of these 
experiments are disputed ; we shall come back to them, 
and to the possible role of the kinesthetic sensations, 
later on. 

Meantime, what is to be said of the eyes themselves, 
and of the impression that a solid object, a tridimen- 
sional stimulus, makes upon them? If you hold up a 
closed book, back towards you, in the middle line of the 
face, and if you observe it alternately with the right and 
left eye, you will find that the two views do not tally; 
the left eye sees the back and the cover to the left, the 
right eye sees the back and the cover to the right. If 
you now make outline drawings of the two views, mount 
them upon a suitable card, and look at them through a 
stereoscope, — which, as you know, combines them 
into a single view, — lo ! you have before you a solid 
book, the back near you, and the edges away in space. 
It is as if the two eyes had reconciled their conflicting 
views, and the result were depth or solidity. 

But is not this the very thing we were in search of? 
have we not at last got at the secret of visible depth? 
No ; we are rather at the crucial point of our discussion. 
For this binocular picture, the image seen in the stere- 
oscope, cannot be, of its own nature and in its own right, 
deep or solid, unless there is a depth-sensation ; and that 



§ 28. The Perception of Distance 129 

conclusion goes against everything that we know both 
of sensation and of the stimuli that arouse sensation. 
To avoid it, some psychologists call in the kinsesthetic 
sensations from the muscles of the eye. Depth or dis- 
tance, they say, is psychologically a blend or fusion of 
visual and kinesthetic sensations. Our binocular view 
of the book, its appearance to the two eyes, is in itself 
flat ; but we run the eyes over it, and the muscular sen- 
sations thus blend with the visual. Nay more, even if 
we hold our eyes fixed, there is still a tendency to move 
them ; and this tendency, now ingrained in our nervous 
system, is enough to realise the perception. Indeed, 
if experiment fails in every case to show the sensations 
of convergence and accommodation, that is just be- 
cause the fusion is so long-established and so ingrained ; 
we perceive distance, the fusion itself; we can hardly 
expect to recover the kinsesthetic sensations that origi- 
nally entered into it; the wonder rather is that they 
should ever appear, that experiment should be able to 
reveal them at all. 

No one can say positively that this hypothesis is 
wrong; but it is difficult to believe that the blend of 
visual and kinsesthetic sensations should yield a result 
so different from either, — namely, the perception of 
space. It seems safer to say that the binocular picture, 
the appearance of the book to the two eyes or the com- 
bined image of the stereoscope, carries the immediate 
meaning of depth or voluminousness. The picture is 
not itself deep or solid ; but we cannot help perceiving 
it as deep and solid; and this pressure is laid upon us 
by what we have called racial heritage, an inherited 



130 Perception and Idea 

disposition of the nervous system; the brain meets the 
impression halfway. The binocular picture thus be- 
comes the core or nucleus of the perception; and the 
meaning of depth is carried by a nervous disposition 
that has no correlate in sensation or image. The 
kinesthetic sensations may then very well serve, as a 
secondary context, to give precision and accuracy to the 
perception, to develop the perception of crude volumi- 
nousness into the perception of definite distances. As 
to the nervous disposition, we can only say that it has 
been set up by the same biological causes that have 
made the organism a motor organism, one that moves 
freely in space ; beyond that general statement we can- 
not go. 

So far we have dealt with the space of sight; but 
there is also a space of touch ; and we have next to ask 
whether the perception of distance can be couched in terms 
of touch alone. Our appeal lies to those who are born 
blind. Observations show that, in their case, the 
direct perception of solidity, of plasticity, is rare and 
fleeting; it arises, perhaps, when they clasp a child to 
their breast, or when they have been trained by long 
manipulation to distinguish objects of various shapes 
and sizes ; it does not form a permanent item of their 
mental furniture. The blind behave as if they per- 
ceived distance; they avoid obstacles, — near obstacles 
by the pressure or temperature of the air reflected back 
upon their face, and remote obstacles by sounds ; they 
can be taught geometry, and they measure objective 
distances by pacing ; but the meaning of distance seems 
always to remain abstract, very much as . the meaning 



§ 29. The Problem in Detail 131 

of light and colour must remain abstract; there is no 
realising perception of distance. The brain mechanism 
which is ready to act at once at the behest of sight thus 
seems to be lacking where touch alone is present ; even 
the perception of crude volume, of depth, has to be 
built up afresh by the individual. The blind live mainly 
in a world of sounds; touch is employed, as a rule, only 
for special and limited purposes, such as dressing, 
reading, handicraft; and their world is therefore not 
pervasively spatial, like the world of the seeing. 

Go back now, for a moment, to the objection raised 
on p. 124! We have, as a matter of fact, been led to 
the belief that the meaning of depth is carried, in the 
last resort, by a brain-habit. But how differently 
does this sentence read before and after the discus- 
sion ! You have learned something of the difficulties 
of the study of perception ; you see why it is necessary 
to look at perception historically, developmentally ; 
you have been taken behind the obvious visual cues to 
the perception itself; you have seen how the kines- 
thetic sensations and the binocular picture may be made 
the subject of experiment. Even the bare outline that 
the narrow compass of the present book allows should 
convince you that the objection was duly answered. 

§ 29. The Problem in Detail. — Every one of our 
familiar perceptions might, now, be treated in this same 
fashion, and in indefinitely greater detail. We should 
start out with our pattern of sensory nucleus, imaginal 
context, and brain-habit ; and we should push our 
analysis back and back, in the effort to reach the pri- 



132 Perception and Idea 

mary and ultimate form of the perception we were dis- 
cussing. The quest is fascinating ; for these are old, 
old bits of the mental life; to trace them home would 
be to go back to the Stone Age — or further ; the earliest 
men we know of perceived the things that we perceive. 
Whether psychology will ever reach the final goal can- 
not be said; but at any rate the problems are genuine 
problems; they can be resolved only by intensive and 
long-continued work; and they demand an extraor- 
dinary ingenuity in the devising of experimental con- 
trols and an unusual degree of patience in experimenting. 
Men spend their lives among dead languages and buried 
cities ; why not excavate and explore the inner world 
of perception ? 

Let us take an instance or two. Consider, first, the 
perception of movement by the eye. Many psycholo- 
gists assume outright a special sensation of movement, 
something that we might call a travel-sensation. That 
hypothesis cuts the difficulty; but the sensation is no 
more admissible than the depth-sensation, and for 
like reasons. Other psychologists call attention, in a 
more scientific spirit, to the fact that in all cases of sud- 
den change there is a sensory index of that change. If, 
for instance, a tone is quickly changed to a higher tone, 
or a light suddenly reduced to a duller light, there is a 
moment of sensory blur or confusion, a moment in 
which the quality or intensity ceases to be clear and 
distinct ; so that, if you were called upon to identify it, 
you could say only ' It lies somewhere about such-and- 
such a part of the scale.' This blur is the sensory index 
of change; not a new sensation, but a modification of 



§ 29. The Problem in Detail 133 

existing sensation. We have it in the perception of 
visual movement; there is a blur of positions; and it 
may reasonably be referred to the positive after-image. 
A shooting-star flashes across the sky ; it leaves a trail 
of after-image as it moves ; you see it both at the place 
it started from, and at the place where it disappears, 
all in the same present time; thinking of it, neverthe- 
less, as a star, a point of light like other stars, you per- 
ceive movement. The same thing holds for the percep- 
tion of rapid movement on the skin. 

So far everything is in order. Now, however, let 
us make a simple experiment. You know the strobo- 
scope or zoetrope that is sold in the toy-shops : a card- 
board drum, open at the top, that twirls on a handle; 
a strip of paper, on which are printed phases of some 
movement (the flight of a bird, the gallop of a horse), is 
placed inside, round the bottom of the drum ; and you 
look down at the strip, while the instrument revolves, 
through vertical slits cut at regular intervals in the up- 
per half of the drum-wall ; you then see a continuous 
movement. Suppose that you make a new strip, on 
which you draw simply two lines, a vertical and a hori- 
zontal; you draw them some distance apart, but in 
such wise that, if they came together, they would form 
a right-angle. Turn the drum slowly, and you see the 
two lines ; turn it swiftly, and you see the right-angle, 
like a letter L ; turn it at a middle rate, and you see — 
according to the direction of turn — the vertical jail 
over into the horizontal, or the horizontal rise up into 
the vertical. You see movement, where there is no 
movement to see ! Here, then, is a case of perception 



134 Perception and Idea 

of movement in terms of sheer brain-habit, of a settled 
nervous disposition that now has no mental correlate, 
but whose establishment has depended on the past 
history of the individual, possibly of the race. 

Take, as a second instance, the perception of melody. 
Primitive melodies seem to be of two types. In the one, 
the scale arises by synthesis of small tone-steps or tone- 
distances, which are approximately ' whole tones ' ; 
the melody consists only of two or three of these steps, 
and the last and lowest tone is the principal note of the 
tune. In the other, the scale arises by analysis of the 
larger consonant intervals, fourth and fifth; these 
intervals are broken up into smaller steps; the octave 
appears as a drone-bass; the first and highest tone is 
the principal note. An intermediate type keeps for the 
most part to small steps, but shows ascents and descents 
portamento through octave, fifth and fourth ; it, too, 
makes the first and highest tone the principal note. We 
can account for a good deal of this development : we 
know that the voice cannot be evenly sustained in recita- 
tive, but naturally drops ; we have reason to believe 
that the memory of absolute pitch is strongly developed 
in primitive peoples (parrots repeat their tunes at the 
same pitch, and the same thing is largely true of young 
children) ; we know the recurrent tonality of the oc- 
tave (p. 52) ; we know that the fourth is the natural 
drop of the voice at the end of a sentence, and the fifth 
its natural rise in asking a question ; we know that 
men, women and boys, singing in ' unison,' will really 
sing in octaves, and often in fifths and fourths ; we know 
that the semitone, the final unit of our own scales, is 



§ 29. The Problem in Detail 135 

the smallest tone-step that can be accurately sung ; we 
know that musical instruments were invented very early, 
and that they must have helped to give stability to the 
vocal scale. These things, however, are not enough. 
For behind all music lies what we must call an intent to 
express, as behind all speech lies an intent to com- 
municate ; and this intent baffles us ; we can only say, 
once again, that it is carried by some native and ingrained 
disposition of the nervous system. The possibility of 
music is further bound up with the possibility of trans- 
position ; the melody must be reproducible and recog- 
nisable, whatever note it start from; and primitive 
melodies do in fact begin on different notes, and yet 
keep the same form. It may be that the primitive singer 
felt his tones, felt the adjustment of his larynx, more 
keenly than we do. Movements of the larynx are mus- 
cular contractions, and their sensations are subject to 
Weber's law (p. 68) ; so that, whether the vocal cords 
are slack or tense, their tension must be increased in the 
same proportion to get equal differences in muscular 
sensation. Here is a possible organic basis for the rela- 
tive constancy of the tones within a melody ; the diffi- 
culty is that even primitive melodies seem to be shaped, 
not by feel, but by ear. 

We may take, as a third instance, a group of percep- 
tions that have been named optical illusions. In a 
certain sense, most of our space-perceptions are illusory. 
Distance, for example, soon closes up on itself; if we 
try to stop, halfway, a friend who is walking down a 
long corridor, we shall be likely to call out before he has 
gone more than a third of its length. Size is illusory ; 



136 Perception and Idea 

the size of the moon in the sky is that of a pea held 
at arm's length before the eyes. Form is illusory : 
how often do we see a table square ? Only direction is 
adequately perceived. Yet we do not, somehow, think 
of all these things as illusions ; we are used to them, and 
can make allowance for them. 

There are, on the other hand, certain simple arrange- 
ments of dots and lines that yield, in perception, a result 
markedly different from that which measurement would 
lead us to expect. These figures have, in recent years, 
been made the subject of detailed study ; that which is 
here shown has, in particular, been repeatedly discussed 
and variously explained. The simplicity of the forms 
is, indeed, treacherous and misleading; analysis is 
very difficult; and there is no present prospect that 
investigators will agree. 







The two horizontal lines are equal in measurement; 
they are unequal to the eye. Why? One suggestion 
is that the eye moves freely along the one, and hesitatingly 
and obstructedly along the other; the obliques tempt out, 
in the one case, and hem in, in the other. The sugges- 
tion can be tested; for movements of the eyes can be 
recorded; and it turns out to be correct. The eyes, 
in passing over a line, like the lines of the figure or of a 
printed page, move by sweeps or jerks ; they go so far, 



§ 29. The Problem in Detail 137 

halt, and start again. Experiment shows that move- 
ments along the lower horizontal take a longer sweep, 
and oftentimes come to a halt only when they have shot 
beyond the end-points of the line ; whereas movements 
along the upper horizontal are themselves shorter, and 
frequently come to a halt before the extremities of the 
line have been reached. Here, then, is a kinaesthetic 
context to carry the meanings ' longer ' and ' shorter.' 
Is the analysis adequate? Not for every case; the 
illusion is found to vary with our general attitude toward 
the figures. If we take them as wholes, the large open 
area below and the closed diamond-shaped area above 
strike the attention ; we say, from total impression, that 
the lower horizontal is the longer. If, however, we take 
the figures critically, part by part, limiting our attention 
to the horizontals and disregarding the obliques, then 
the illusion is greatly reduced and may, with practice, 
disappear. Here, then, is a second context, which 
involves a brain-habit. Another suggestion is that 
linear perspective may be at work ; the larger figure is 
a book opening toward you, the smaller is a book opened 
away from you ; the lower horizontal is therefore further 
off, and should (if the two books were of the same size) 
be smaller than the upper; since it is not, the lower 
book is seen as the larger. There are, without doubt, 
many figures in which perspective influences the percep- 
tion ; but there seems to be no reason to invoke it here. 
A fourth suggestion is that we read into the figures 
ideas of our own muscular state; the lower figure has room 
to expand, it is stretching and yawning ; the upper is 
cramped and huddled; and so the illusion of length is 



138 Perception and Idea 

produced. There is no doubt, again, that this putting 
of oneself in place of the lines plays a part in certain 
perceptions ; but its influence here is negatived by the 
swallow figure; the birds flying toward each other are 






further apart than those flying from each other. On 
the whole, we may be satisfied with the two contexts 
first mentioned ; the discussion shows, however, how 
many and how various motives may enter in to deter- 
mine an illusory perception. 

§ 30. The Types of Idea. — Idea takes its plan 
from perception ; and ideas may therefore be classified, 
like perceptions, as qualitative, temporal and spatial. 
When, however, we speak of types of idea, we usually 
have a different classification in view. Our ideas differ 
as our equipment of imagery differs ; some minds are 
rich in visual or auditory images, others are poor or 
deficient. When first these differences were brought to 
light, they seemed to be permanent and clearly marked ; 
children, especially, were classed as eye-minded, ear- 
minded,- and touch-minded^ov motor-minded, according 
as their ideas consisted predominantly of visual, audi- 
tory, or kinesthetic images ; and it was thought no less 
necessary to discover a child's type, and to instruct 
him in accordance with it, than it is to test the colour- 
vision of pilots and engineers. Moreover, since all ideas 
may be translated into words, and since verbal ideas 



§ 3°. The Types of Idea 139 

may also be visual, auditory or motor, — ideas of the 
word seen, heard, or spoken, — three sub-types were 
added to the main types of idea ; the verbal-visual, the 
verbal-auditory, and the verbal-motor. The doctrine of 
types found support in pathology; thus, the famous 
French physician J. M. Charcot reports a case of eye- 
mindedness in which visual ideas were suddenly lost. 
The patient writes : "I possessed at one time a great 
faculty of picturing to myself persons who interested 
me, colours and objects of every kind; I made use of 
this faculty extensively in my studies. I read anything 
I wanted to learn, and then shutting my eyes I saw 
again quite clearly the letters with their every detail. 
All of a sudden this internal vision absolutely disap- 
peared. Now I cannot picture to myself the features of 
my children or my wife, or any other object of my daily 
surroundings. I dream simply of speech. I am obliged 
to say things which I wish to retain in my memory, 
whereas formerly it was sufficient for me to photograph 
them in my eye." 

Nowadays the case could hardly be recorded in so 
simple a way ; we have learned that ideational type is a 
very complicated and itself a very variable matter. Marked 
differences of imagery, as between one mind and another, 
undoubtedly exist ; but the distribution into types is 
made difficult by two facts. The first is that there are 
great differences in the nature of images even where the 
gross type is the same ; thus, of two predominantly eye- 
minded persons, the one may have vivid and precise, 
the other vague and obscure images. The second is 
that imagery varies with the nature of the test made, 



140 Perception and Idea 

the situation or material that arouses the images; in 
strictness, we can only say that, under such-and-such 
conditions, the imaginal type proved to be such-and- 
such. With these cautions before us, we can, however, 
make out four common types. The versatile type uses 
visual, auditory and verbal-motor images more or less 
indifferently. A second type prefers visual images, 
with verbal-motor a good second. A third type prefers 
verbal images of the auditory-motor kind, with visual 
images a poor second. A fourth is almost exclusively 
verbal-motor. In this last type, kinaesthesis, in the 
special form of the feel of articulation, has reconquered 
the place that it held in the long-gone past, before speech 
had come (p. 119). 

We observe nothing of these differences in daily life, 
simply because we are interested in meanings and not in 
processes ; so long as the audience gets somewhere near 
the meaning that the speaker or writer is trying to con- 
vey, everything necessary for practical purposes has been 
accomplished. All the same, there are many signs of 
ideational type, if we are on the alert to seize them. 
The attitude of attention is different, according as a 
man's ideas are visual or auditory-motor; the child's 
mode of recitation is different, slow and systematic in 
the former case, quick and impulsive in the latter ; the 
• mistakes made are characteristic ; and you can tell by 
an author's style whether he has visual images and 
whether he hears his sentences ring in the mind's ear. 
// is natural to connect the dominance of certain images 
with the choice of certain professions ; but a correlation 
cannot be made out. " I should have thought," remarks 



§ 30- The Types of Idea 141 

Galton, " that the faculty of visualisation would be 
common among geometricians, but many of the highest 
seem able somehow to get on without much of it ; " 
and again " men who declare themselves entirely defi- 
cient in the power of seeing mental pictures can become 
painters " of acknowledged rank. The late Professor 
James wrote to the same effect : "I am myself a good 
draughtsman, and have a very lively interest in pictures, 
statues, architecture and decoration. But I am an 
extremely poor visualiser." These statements, to be 
sure, were made without any thorough-going investi- 
gation; we must remember that there are different 
ways of geometrising as there are different styles and 
ideals of painting; and we may add that there are 
plenty of instances on the other side; Goethe and 
Dickens were magnificent visualisers. The study of 
imaginal type, in relation to the interests and achieve- 
ment of its possessor, thus offers an inviting field of 
work. 



142 Perception and Idea 

Questions and Exercises 

(i) State in your own words, and without looking at the 
book, why the psychologist has to do with meaning, and 
what meaning is psychologically. Illustrate from your own 
experience ; find, in particular, a case of meaning carried by 
kinsesthesis, and a case of meaning carried in purely nervous 
terms. 

(2) Draw diagrams to illustrate the typical perception 
and idea, and the various stages in its reduction to the skele- 
ton-type described at the end of § 24. 

(3) Qualitative perceptions undergo relatively little change. 
What changes have they undergone? How is it that these 
changes have not unfitted them to mean quality? 

(4) A stereoscope and a set of slides prepared by the author 
may be obtained from the C. H. Stoelting Co., 3047 Carroll 
Avenue, Chicago, 111. Explain the construction of the 
stereoscope, part by part ; and work carefully through the 
slides, writing down what you see. It is useless to play with 
the instrument ; take the experiments seriously. 

(5) If you are touched with a pencil on wrist and chest, 
and try to retouch the places stimulated, you are more nearly 
right on wrist than on chest. Why? Try the experiment 
several times over. 

(6) You have probably often heard the rising tone of a 
siren-whistle sounded by some manufactory or given as a 
fire-signal. Can you image it? If so, what is the index of 
change ? If not, try to lay your finger on this index when you 
next hear the whistle. 

(7) If tastes and smells have not the attribute of extension, 
how do you account for their apparent spread in space? 
If sounds are not spatial, how is it that we can localise them? 

(8) Is there such a thing as a purely visual rhythm ? How 
would you approach the question experimentally? 

(9) Perform Aristotle's experiment, by crossing the second 
over the first finger of the right hand, and pressing on a 



References 143 

marble placed under the crossed joints, (a) Is Aristotle's 
statement correct? Write out your observations, (b) Is 
sight decisive? Helmholtz said, on the contrary: "We 
are continually controlling and correcting the notions of 
locality derived from the eye by the help of the sense of 
touch, and always accept the impressions on the latter sense 
as decisive." (c) Can you work out the perception of a thing 
or object, somewhat as the book has worked out the per- 
ception of distance? 

(10) Can you suggest methods for the determination of 
imaginal type ? 

(n) Close your eyes, (a) Let an experimenter draw a 
blunt-pointed pencil at an even rate along the inside of your 
arm from the shoulder to the tip of the middle finger. The 
point seems to travel more quickly at some places than 
at others : why ? Draw a diagram of the arm, and mark the 
places of apparent slowing and quickening, (b) Tie two 
pencils together with a bit of rubber between, so that the 
points are i\ to i| in. apart. Let an experimenter set the 
two points crosswise on the skin at the shoulder, and draw 
them with even speed and pressure along the inside of your 
arm to the finger-tips. The points seem to converge and di- 
verge: why? Draw a diagram as before. 

(12) If a rough thread is drawn by an experimenter be- 
tween your forefinger and thumb, at first quickly and then 
slowly, it will seem shorter in the first experiment than in 
the second. Why? 



References 

J. M. Charcot, Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous 
System, iii., 1889, Lect. xiii. ; W. James, Principles of Psy- 
chology, 1890, i., chs. xiii., xv. ; ii., chs. xviii., xix., xx. ; 
C. H. H. Parry, The Evolution of the Art of Music, 1896; 
article on Optical Illusions, in Dictionary of Philosophy and 
Psychology, ii., 1902 ; W. Wundt, Lectures on Human and 



144 Perception and Idea 

Animal Psychology, 1896, Lect. xi. ; Outlines of Psychology, 
1907, §§ 9, 10, 11 ; M. R. Fernald, The Diagnosis of Mental 
Imagery, 191 2; E. B. Titchener, Experimental Psychology, 
L, i. and ii., 1901 (experiments on perception) ; Text-book 
of Psychology, 1910, 303 ff. 



CHAPTER VI 

Association 

Here is a kind of attraction which in the mental world will be found 
to have as extraordinary effects as in the natural, and to show itself in 
as many and as various forms. — David Hume 

§ 31. The Association of Ideas. — The doctrine of the 
' association of ideas ' is one of the oldest and most 
influential in the history of psychology. It begins, in a 
somewhat casual way, with Aristotle. Suppose, Aris- 
totle says, that we are trying to recall something that 
has slipped our mind ; what do we ordinarily do ? We 
hunt through a number of things, beginning with some- 
thing that is like what we want to recall, or contrary 
to it, or that was next it in time, or adjacent to it in space. 
These other things, the like, the contrary, the just be- 
fore or just after, the adjoining, have the power to sug- 
gest what we have forgotten. Aristotle gives the 
impression that everybody acts in this way, as a matter 
of course ; and no doubt his hearers acquiesced ; for the 
statement sounds reasonable. We want, for instance, 
to remember a certain picture that we saw ten years 
ago : how do we set to work ? We start from something 
like it : ' I remember that it reminded me of Van Eyck ' ; 
or from something opposite : ' I remember smiling to 
think how a Venetian would have treated it ' ; or from 
something next it in time : ' I remember coming to it 

L 145 



146 Association 

after three whole hours of Dutch genre ' ; or from some- 
thing next it in space : ' I remember that it hung 
beside a Mabuse portrait.' Seeing how natural and 
obvious such remarks are, we can understand that 
Aristotle's single sentence had tremendous consequences 
for psychology. It foreshadowed the four ' laws of 
the association of ideas,' the laws of similarity, of con- 
trast, of succession in time, and of coexistence in space. 
According to the doctrine of association, one idea ' calls 
up ' another because it is like that other, or contrasts 
with it, or was next to it in time or space ; likeness and 
difference, succession and adjacency, somehow give an 
idea the power to recall, and render it liable in its turn 
to be recalled. The four laws thus represent an attempt 
to explain the course of our ideas, and for that reason 
they have always appealed to common sense. 

But, for the same reason, the laws have not proved 
an unmixed blessing to psychology. Aristotle, it is 
clear, was simply raising a practical question ; and prac- 
tical questions are answered in terms of meaning, not 
of process. Moreover, Aristotle was temperamentally 
a logician, and he could not help throwing even this bit 
of everyday practice into formal logical shape. Notice 
the arrangement in pairs : like-contrary, coexistent- 
successive; that is logical. Notice also the nature of 
the pairs. Like-contrary is the extreme way of saying 
like-unlike ; and when you mention succession, you 
mention the only kind of non-coexistence that can 
come into account for psychology ; so that both pairs 
have the form ' A and not-A ' (like and not-like, coex- 
istent and not-coexistent) ; and that is logical again. 



§ 3*- The Association of Ideas 147 

Aristotle's four rules are therefore not really empirical, 
in the sense that they are directly derived from a study 
of experience; they rather show the inveterate logician, 
who is bound to schematise and tabulate. Later writers, 
swayed now by experience and now by logic, have both 
increased and decreased the number of these ' laws ' of 
association ; the general tendency has been to reduce them 
to two, or even to one. Thus, we can make contrast, logi- 
cally, a case of likeness ; the palace reminds us of the 
hovel, apparently by contrast ; yet are not the palace 
and the hovel alike, as human habitations? We can, 
still more easily, reduce space to time. If the two 
pictures hung together on the wall, they were seen at 
the same time. Simultaneity, however, is one kind of 
contiguity in time ; succession is another ; and temporal 
contiguity thus includes everything. The four laws 
have become two : similarity, and contiguity in time. 

Can we go further? Yes, if we go on arguing. The 
picture reminded me of Van Eyck; it was like a Van 
Eyck; the association seems to be an association by 
similarity. Yet it is practically certain that the picture 
in question was, at some time or other, present in my 
mind along with some picture by Van Eyck. It is prac- 
tically certain, in other words, that the two ideas were 
in temporal contiguity; and every instance of associa- 
tion by similarity raises the same sort of presumption. 
That being the case, we may discard the law of similarity ; 
and contiguity stands alone, the sole survivor of the 
Aristotelian quartet. Only, this is all logic, a matter of 
meanings, a translation of psychological fact; we have 
not got to the facts themselves. 



148 Association 

We shall come to psychology presently. Meantime 
you should try to realise how well this doctrine of associa- 
tion works for practical purposes, and how strong is the 
appeal it makes to the practical side of our nature. It 
explains the appearance of every single idea that has 
ever occurred to anybody; it offers to take us to the 
very heart of psychology without need of training or 
preparation ; it flatters us into the belief that we have 
all our lives been talking and thinking psychology with- 
out knowing it; it covers up the gap that separates 
common sense from science. Small wonder that Hume 
compared the law of association in psychology with 
the law of gravitation in physics ! All the great names 
in British psychology (and the fact throws a good deal 
of light on the psychology of the nation itself) are con- 
nected with the doctrine of association ; a whole science 
has taken its national colour from a single principle of 
explanation. Association has also played its part, 
though less dominantly, in France and Germany. 

Realise all this; and realise also that the doctrine 
was of great service in the days when psychology was 
in the making ; it is not only agreeable to common sense, 
it is not only historically important, but it also did true 
psychological service. Let us admit all this : and then 
we must add that the reign of associationism was over 
as soon as ever psychology became scientific; as soon, 
that is, as the proper task of psychology was recognised 
and formulated (p. 18). For let us take an instance: 
what does the word ' summer ' suggest to you ? Very 
likely it suggests 'winter.' How, then, is this association 
to be explained psychologically? By contrast? But 



§ 3 2 - Associative Tendencies: Material of Study 149 

the ideas of summer and winter may be exactly alike, 
both of them verbal-auditory-motor, or both of them 
mental pictures ; the contrast is a contrast of meaning, 
not of mental process or pattern ; the real summer, what 
we mean by the word ' summer,' contrasts with the real 
winter, and not the idea of summer with the idea of 
winter. By resemblance? But, if the ideas of summer 
and winter are exactly alike, so are they also like thou- 
sands of other ideas, verbal-auditory-motor or visual- 
imaginal ; there is no reason in their psychological 
likeness why the one should suggest the other ; and if 
they do suggest each other by ' resemblance,' the re- 
semblance is again a likeness of meaning (they are both 
seasons of the year) and not of mental constitution. 
Try the matter out for yourself, in any concrete case of 
association, and you will reach the same result; the 
ideas of associationism are not psychological ideas. 
James sums things up for us : " Association," he 
says, " so far as the word stands for an effect, is between 
things thought of; it is things, not ideas, which are asso- 
ciated in the mind. And so far as association stands for 
a cause, it is between processes in the brain; it is these 
which, by being associated in certain ways, determine 
what successive objects shall be thought." The brain 
associates, and meanings are associated. We have 
already said something of the psychology of meaning 
(pp. 26 ff., 117 £f.) ; what can we now say of the associa- 
tive functions of the brain? 

§ 32. Associative Tendencies: Material of Study. — 
We want to find out how those processes in the brain 



i5° 



Association 



which are the correlates of our ideas go together, get 
connected or associated. The brain is a machine; 
and it is not only complicated, but it is also plastic, 
that is, it is subject to change and modification. The 
complexity of the machine makes it necessary for us to 
work with simple stimuli and by strict methods; only 
if we work with simple stimuli shall we get to the bare 
essentials of the associative functions ; and only if we 
work by strict methods shall we obtain results which 
other investigators can repeat and verify. Even so, 
the plasticity of the machine makes it impossible for us 
to lay down hard and fast laws of connection; we can 
speak only of connective tendencies or of associative 
tendencies; what actually happens, in any particular 
case, is likely to be the joint result of many tendencies, 
weak and strong, conflicting and concurring. 

The task before us is, therefore, not easy ; but it is 
straightforward ; and that is the next best thing. We 
want to find out how associative tendencies in the brain 
are set up ; and to do this we must, evidently, find some 
way of creating sl bond between one nervous process 
and another; we must devise experiments in which we 
make or construct brain-connections. We need not look 
far afield; for we make such connections whenever we 
learn anything new ; so that we have only to learn under 
experimental conditions, and the task is accomplished. 
But what shall we learn ? what stimuli shall we employ 
in the experiments? ' Words,' you will say; and words 
have many advantages for learning; but they have, 
in this case, the supreme disadvantage that they are 
ingrained meanings. Words therefore will not do; 



§ 32. Associative Tendencies : Material of Study 151 

but something very like them will. The question of the 
stimuli to be employed was, in fact, answered for us, 
thirty years ago, by the German psychologist Hermann 
Ebbinghaus, who — by one of those happy thoughts 
that come after long and intensive occupation with a 
subject — hit upon the notion of the meaningless syl- 
lable. Ebbinghaus made up over 2000 meaningless 
' words,' all consisting of a vowel or diphthong between 
two consonants ; syllables standing in the same relation 
to his own language that leb, rit, mon, yup, kig, wes, 
der, zam, for instance, bear to English. See the advan- 
tage of this kind of material for the work we have in 
view ! The syllables are just like words, in that they 
may be seen, heard, or felt in the throat ; they are un- 
like words, and vastly superior to them, in that they 
have no habitual associates ; they lack context and mean- 
ing; every syllable in a series may be considered to 
have the same chances of making connections as every 
other. The material is so rich and varied that endless 
experiments can be made ; it is so simple and uniform 
that the results of one experiment may be compared 
directly with the results of another ; it may be drawn 
from any language, and so may be used in the lab- 
oratories of any country. Moreover, it is absolutely 
under control; it is just the kind of material that we 
need when we are tied down to strict and accurate 
method ; we can vary at will the manner of presentation 
to the learner, the number of syllables in a series, the 
rate at which they follow one another, and so on ; and 
the report required from the learner himself is easy and 
natural ; there are no long descriptive phrases ; he has 



152 Association 

only to say or to write the syllables he has learned. 
Lastly, we may proceed from experiments with this mean- 
ingless material to experiments with real words, words that 
mean ; and we may hope in that way to pass beyond 
the bare essentials of the brain's associative function, 
and to get a clue to the complex interplay of asso- 
ciative tendencies in real life. All in all, it is not too 
much to say that Ebbinghaus' recourse to meaningless 
syllables, as means to the study of associative tenden- 
cies, marks the most considerable advance, in this 
chapter of the psychological system, since the time of 
Aristotle. 

§33. The Establishment of Associative Tendencies. 
— The use of meaningless syllables has brought with it 
a whole armoury of technical methods for the study of 
the associative tendencies. We have here no space to 
treat of these methods in detail ; fortunately, the results 
that we shall mention speak for themselves ; and it 
may be added that all the methods of experiment are, 
in principle, changes rung upon one simple model, in 
which the observer sits down before a series of syllables, 
reads them through, so-many times over, in a state of 
attention, and then, either immediately or after an 
interval of time, repeats them ' from memory.' We 
proceed, then, to answer the question : How are asso- 
ciative tendencies established in the brain? 

Their establishment depends, first and most obviously, 
upon the number of syllables in the series presented to 
the observer. While he can recite correctly, after a 
single reading, a series of 6 or 7, a longer series simply 



§ 33- The Establishment of Associative Tendencies 153 

throws him into confusion. The first and last terms 
have a definite advantage ; they may, indeed, be the 
only syllables that can be repeated after a single read- 
ing of a 12-term series. Secondly, the tendencies are 
strengthened by repetition. The first reading is more 
important than any other single reading ; after that, 
there is for a while little if any improvement ; then the 
results take a sudden step up ; and thenceforward 
progress is fairly steady until the limit of the experi- 
ment is reached. Thirdly, the tendencies are furthered 
by a grouping of the syllables. The observer learns a 
series more quickly if, for instance, he throws it into a 
rhythm. Fourthly, it is important to distribute the 
readings in time. Two readings a day for 12 days give 
better results than four a day for 6 days, or eight a day 
for 3 days, although the total number remains the same. 
Fifthly, the rate of reading has its effect ; the syllables 
must not follow one another too fast or too slowly. 
There are great differences between individual learners ; 
but we may say in general that the syllables should at 
first be presented at a moderate rate (perhaps two in 
the second), and that the rate should be slowly in- 
creased as the readings proceed. Sixthly, not only repe- 
tition itself, but also the manner of repetition, makes a 
difference. Meaningless syllables are learned some- 
what better if the whole series is read through, over 
and over, from end to end, than if they are taken a 
few at a time, in small lots. Lastly, recitation or reading 
aloud is ordinarily more effective than silent reading; 
largely, perhaps, because the separate pronouncing of 
every syllable equalises attention; every term of the 



154 Association 

series is brought out sharply and clearly, and there is 
no chance to slur. 

Here, however, we must remember the differences 
of imaginal type (p. 138) ; and it is true that a markedly 
visual learner will profit less by recitation than an 
auditory-motor learner. These experiments have, in- 
deed, revealed other typical differences between indi- 
viduals, such as those of slow and quick, and of receptive 
and ingenious learning. Some of us, it seems, are natu- 
rally quick, and some are naturally slow learners, just 
as some work best at night and others in the morning. 
Some observers, again, accept the series of syllables, 
passively and without question ; others embroider and 
interpret the meaningless forms in all manner of ways; 
mon becomes man, and kig king, and wer where, and so 
on. We know nothing at present of the correlated dif- 
ferences in the nervous system. 

The results just given may be compared with those 
obtained when meaningful stimuli are employed. Thus, 
8 or 9 one-syllable words, and 10 to 12 one-place numbers, 
can be recited after a single reading. Meaningful 
material, which is grouped or unified by its topic, may 
be learned ten times as quickly as meaningless syllables. 
It may also be presented more rapidly; iambic and 
trochaic verses, for instances, may be taken at double 
the rate of the syllables. Dates of historical events, 
and the words of a foreign language, are best learned 
like the meaningless syllables ; and connected meaning- 
ful material, like a poem or an oration, should very 
decidedly be read as a whole, from end to end, in the 
successive repetitions. If there are brief passages of 



§ 33- The Establishment of Associative Tendencies 155 

unusual difficulty, they may, of course, be gone over by 
themselves, in the intervals between the total readings ; 
the general rule, however, is to learn by wholes. This 
appears, in fact, to be the procedure generally followed 
by bards and tellers of folktales; and actors who play 
many roles in quick succession are able to ' wing a part,' 
as the phrase goes, by reading it through several times 
over at brief intervals. Children who memorise a 
poem in sections, a stanza now and a stanza to-morrow, 
waste a great deal of time. 

Let us now come back to the meaningless syllables, 
and ask what is the net result of all the influences that we 
have listed. Suppose, in other words, that a series of 
syllables has been presented at a certain rate, thrown 
into a certain rhythm, repeated a certain number of 
times with fitting distribution in time, recited at every 
repetition : what is the final outcome, as regards the 
establishment of associative tendencies in the brain? 
It is this : that a strong connection has been set up between 
the successive terms of the series, in the order of their 
presentation; and that weaker connections have been set 
up between every term and every other term, whether the 
terms are near or remote in the series, and whether they 
are taken forwards or backwards. Let us illustrate by 
reference to the alphabet. If the alphabet represents 
a series of meaningless syllables, then there is a strong 
connection between a and b, b and c, . . . y and z; 
but there are also weaker connections between a and d, 
. . . v and z ; and further, there are connections back- 
ward between z and y, z and x, . . . d and a. The 
series of syllables has thus impressed the brain with a 



156 Association 

very complex meshwork of associative tendencies, stronger 
in some places (direct forward connection) and weaker 
in others (remote and backward connection), but still 
functionally interconnected through all its parts. 

§ 34. The Interference and Decay of Associative 
Tendencies. — If a set of associative tendencies, such 
as we have just described, is left to itself, and neither 
disturbed nor renewed, it gradually disappears ; the loss 
is at first very rapid, then proceeds more slowly, and 
thereafter goes on only at a snail's pace. To make the 
matter concrete, we may think of the meshwork of 
tendencies as a meshwork of channels, deeper and shal- 
lower, in the substance of the brain; then the rule is 
that the channels tend to fill up, — the shallow ones 
speedily, the deeper ones at first quickly and then more 
and more slowly, — until everything is smooth again. 
This is a mere figure, but it carries the meaning that we 
desire. The same thing happens with the tendencies set 
up by meaningful material; they too slowly die away ; 
but it is doubtful if they ever wholly disappear; in their 
case the brain, if it has been thoroughly impressed, 
seems never wholly to ' forget.' Ebbinghaus learned 
some stanzas of Byron's Don Juan, for experimental 
purposes, and did not look at them again for 22 years; 
yet he relearned those stanzas in 93 per cent, of the time 
required to learn new stanzas ; a saving of 7 per cent. 
Some stanzas that he had learned more thoroughly were 
not read again for 1 7 years ; these were relearned with a 
saving of nearly 20 per cent. He had no memory what- 
ever of the verses formerly learned ; but his brain ' re- 



§ 34- Interference and Decay of Associative Tendencies 157 

membered ' ; the associative tendencies had not com- 
pletely disappeared. 

As a rule, however, a particular set of tendencies is 
not allowed to die a natural death ; it is interfered with 
by others. All associative tendencies need a certain 
time to establish themselves, to settle down; and if this 
time is not granted, but stimulus treads on the heels of 
stimulus, there is no impression of the meshwork, and 
no connections are formed ; we have seen that a series 
of excessive length simply throws the learner into con- 
fusion. A recently acquired connection may even be 
abolished, as most of us know to our cost, by interrup- 
tion of the train of thought ; you have just got to your 
point, to the insight, the phrasing, the argument, that 
will clinch things ; you are distracted by some irrelevant 
matter ; and when you come back to your work, the 
point has gone. So nicely balanced and so easily dis- 
turbed are the associative tendencies, that you may 
never recover it ; no wonder that the constructive worker, 
in literature, in science, in affairs, ' hates to be inter- 
rupted ' ! 

With meaningful material, interference may arise in 
other ways. Take the alphabet again; a is connected 
with b through the frequent repetition of abc, but is also 
connected with z by the phrase 'a to z.' If, then, a 
appears ; and if the 6-tendency and the z-tendency are 
of approximately equal strength ; then there may be no 
connection at all; the two tendencies cancel or inhibit 
each other. A question may leave you dumb, not be- 
cause you have no answer, but because you have so 
many different answers that no one of them can force 



1 5$ Association 

through to expression. This sort of interference, 
which comes at the end of the associative process, is 
called terminal inhibition ; there is another kind, com- 
ing at the beginning of the process, which we may call 
initial inhibition. If a is already connected with b, then 
it is difficult to connect it with k ; b gets in the way. You 
have some particular fault of style, or you have fallen 
into the habit of spelling wrongly some particular word ; 
you want to correct the fault, to spell aright. But 
every time that you are oft" guard, the mistake recurs ; 
the existing connection a-b heads oft" the desired connec- 
tion a-k. 

Fortunately, there are compensations. If a group 
of tendencies, for instance, does escape interference, 
then the brain settles down of itself. Schoolboys, with 
a keen sense for economy of effort, learn their lessons 
only partway overnight, and rind that a hasty review 
next morning is enough to fix them ; the associative 
tendencies work while their owners sleep. The prac- 
tised speaker, knowing that he has to talk on a certain 
subject at a certain date, marshals his present ideas in 
half-an-hour of concentrated attention, and then drops 
the whole tiling; his brain incubates it for him; and 
when the appointed day comes near, he finds that his 
associative tendencies have practically prepared his 
address. Besides, the tendencies may converge, as 
well as interfere ; we have seen how continued attention 
opens the mind to relevant facts and closes it against the 
irrelevant (p. 98). If they did not, it would be impos- 
sible for us to follow the thread of a paragraph, to say 
nothing of a chapter or of a whole book. Convergence 



§ 35- The Connections of Mental Processes 159 

thus offsets interference. We shall meet it in various 
forms later (§§ 42, 45, 65) ; meantime we leave the brain, 
and pass to the mental processes themselves. How 
are they connected? 

§35. The Connections of Mental Processes. — So 

far as the elementary processes are concerned, this 
question has already been answered in our discussion 
of perception. We found that there were two modes of 
sensory connection, two ways in which sensations may go 
together. In qualitative perceptions, such as the per- 
ception of a musical note, there is a blend or fusion of 
qualities ; we can, to be sure, analyse the compound 
tone, after practice, into fundamental and overtones ; 
yet it still comes to us as unitary, as a single impression ; 
it stands only at one remove, so to speak, from the 
simplicity of sensation itself. The tastes of coffee and 
lemonade, with their blending of taste and smell, of 
touch and temperature ; the organic feels of hunger and 
thirst and nausea ; the kinsesthesis aroused by grasping 
and pulling, by Hf ting the arm and swinging the foot ; 
all these experiences are fusions, more or less intimate, 
more or less complex, of sensory qualities. They too 
can be analysed; but the analysis is not easy; the 
qualities cling together, seem in a way to merge into one 
another. In spatial perceptions, on the other hand, in 
such perceptions as the sight of my desk with its litter 
of writing materials, the elementary processes stand out 
side by side ; brown contrasts with blue, dark with light ; 
here, we might say, is no confluence, but rather concourse. 
In the perception of rhythm we have the same separate- 



160 Association 

ness of sensations, only that it is now temporal instead 
of spatial; and in the perception of change (p. 132) 
we find both modes of connection, separate qualities or 
intensities passing into one another by that peculiar 
blur or fusion which we have called the index of change. 
This second type of connection, whether it is the side- 
by-side of space or the end-to-end of time, may be 
named conjunction. 

The associative tendencies which we have been more 
recently discussing are set up by series of meaningless 
syllables, that is to say, by discrete stimuli. It is clear, 
then, that the connection of the correlated mental pro- 
cesses is of the conjunctive type ; we have said nothing 
of the brain-processes which underlie sensory fusion. 
We can, indeed, say nothing of them ; we have no know- 
ledge of their nature. It has been suggested that quali- 
tative perception is correlated with a synergy of the 
brain-processes, that is, with a cooperation so close 
that every process taking part in it loses something of 
its individuality. That is possible; we cannot say 
more. 

When we leave the elementary processes for complex 
experiences, for perceptions and ideas, and ask how these 
are connected, we cannot return any completely satis- 
factory answer. Experiments may be made; thus, a 
familiar visual stimulus (word or simple picture) may 
be shown for a few seconds to the observer, with the in- 
struction that he receive it passively and report the con- 
sequent course of his mental processes. Under these 
circumstances, it invariably happens that the stimulus 
is immediately named. After that, apparently, any one 



§ 35- The Connections of Mental Processes 161 

of three typical things may happen. First, the named 
perception is supplemented by a sense-feeling. A word 
printed in very small letters on a large background 
aroused the feeling of loneliness ; a word printed in 
red, a feeling of excitement ; the word ' blinding,' the 
disagreeable feeling of a dazzling light. Then the feel- 
ing gives way to an idea, which supplants the meaning 
of the stimulus. Secondly, the named perception is 
resolved into the idea of some object previously seen. 
An outline drawing of a face may be replaced by the 
idea of a friend, whose features are, so to say, read into 
the drawing ; or the word ' Tell,' printed on a blue 
ground, may be replaced by the idea of the familiar pic- 
ture of William Tell springing from a boat to the rocks ; 
the blue of the background becomes the blue sky of 
the painting. Thirdly, and only occasionally, the 
named perception is followed by an idea which comes 
separate and detached ; we have the traditional pattern 
of the - successive association.' These three types of 
connection (there are, of course, intermediate forms) do 
not furnish a satisfactory answer to our question, 
mainly because the experiments are not properly under 
control ; the observer comes to them with all sorts of 
associative tendencies at work; and unless we make a 
very large number of observations, we cannot be sure 
that our results are either representative or exhaustive. 
At the same time, such experiments help us ; they 
show, for instance, that the doctrine of association — ■ 
quite apart from its logical leanings, or perhaps just by 
reason of them — regarded the course of ideas in too 
' intellectual ' a way ; the sense-feelings, and other feeling- 



1 62 Association 

blends that we shall mention later, play a larger part in 
our thinking than the associationists dreamed of. They 
show, too, that the ' successive association ' is not the 
commonest, but rather the least common, form of mental 
connection. Listen to a quotation from Hobbes ! "In 
a discourse of our present civil war," he writes, " what 
could seem more impertinent [less to the point] than to 
ask, as one did, what was the value of the Roman 
penny? Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. 
For the thought of the war introduced the thought of 
delivering up the king to his enemies; the thought of 
that brought in the thought of the delivering up of 
Christ ; and that again the thought of the thirty pence, 
which was the price of that treason. And thence easily 
followed that malicious question : and all this in a mo- 
ment of time, for thought is quick." Hobbes has worked 
out the logical coherence, the coherence of meaning ; but 
he is very far from a psychology of the situation. What 
actually took place in the mind of the questioner we 
shall never know ; we may be very sure, however, that 
his mental processes did not follow one another in 
logical order, as Hobbes imagines. There was a con- 
vergence of associative tendencies, which expressed 
itself in the question ; there need not have been any 
succession of ideas at all. 

§ 36. The Law of Mental Connection. — We have 
spoken at some length of the establishment of associa- 
tive tendencies in the brain, of their decay with time, 
and of their mutual interference. Can we sum up our 
knowledge of them in a single general statement? And 



§ 36. The Law of Mental Connection 163 

can we then translate this general statement into psy- 
chological language, and so reach a formula of mental 
connection that may stand in place of the logical laws 
of association ? Let us try. 

We must proceed very carefully, even if our care 
drives us into clumsiness of expression. We cannot, for 
instance, leave out the fact that the meaningless syl- 
lables are given in the state of attention. It appears, 
indeed, that attention is necessary to association ; we 
may doubt if any amount of repetition — to take that 
example — would set up an associative tendency, were 
it not for attention. Repetition, we remember, is one 
of the determinants of attention (p. 94) ; so that the 
repeated experience is likely to become vivid in the very 
nature of the case ; but if it does not, if for any reason 
our attention is diverted or we fail to notice the stimulus, 
repetition has no associative power. How many of us 
would like to recall the carpet or wall-paper of the room 
we slept in as children ! Thousands of times we saw 
the colours and the patterns ; but our adult memory is 
an absolute blank ; those repeated stimuli never ' im- 
pressed ' us. 

We cannot either leave out the fact that the meaning- 
less syllables are bracketed all together, so to speak, 
by a certain situation, namely, the situation created by 
the experiment. The observer comes to them, in ac- 
cordance with this situation, intending to learn them, 
to memorise them : a fact of very great importance ! — 
and a fact that needs to be dwelt on for a little, if we 
are to see our way clearly in what follows. We said 
on p. 149 that meanings are associated. Yet we have 



164 Association 

been studying the formation of associative tendencies 
in the brain, the associating organ, by the help of — 
meaningless syllables ! Is there not a flat contradic- 
tion here between theory and practice? No, that is 
really not the case ; and the key to the riddle lies in this 
fact of the ' situation ' which we are now discussing. 
The syllables are meaningless as syllables; they are 
thus set apart from Ordinary syllables that are mean- 
ingful; and it is this difference from words, combined 
with their likeness to words in other respects, that makes 
them useful to the experimenter (p. 151). For since they 
are themselves meaningless, we can put upon them a 
constant meaning of our own ; we can introduce them 
into any situation of our own making ; and the meaning 
that we give them, in the study of the associative tenden- 
cies, is the meaning of ' an experimental series to be 
learned under certain instructions ' : a meaning which 
is definite, and which remains the same throughout the 
experiments. You see, then, that the ' situation ' is 
important. 

Attention, as we know, means reinforcement of cer- 
tain nervous processes and inhibition of others (p. 107) ; 
and the intention to learn implies the activity of direc- 
tive nerve-forces (p. 96), the existence of a special set 
or disposition of the brain. Let us keep these things 
in mind ; and let us call the brain-processes that are 
correlated with mental processes ' psychoneural ' pro- 
cesses. Then we may say : When a number of psycho- 
neural processes, all of which are reinforced and all of which 
stand alike under the directive influence of a nervous dis- 
position, occur together under certain favourable conditions, 



§ 36. The Law of Mental Connection 165 

then associative tendencies are established among them, 
such that the recurrence of any one tends to involve, accord- 
ing to circumstances, the recurrence of the others. The 
phrase ' under favourable conditions ' refers to the effect 
of repetition of the series, of their distribution in time, 
and so forth ; and the phrase ' according to circum- 
stances ' means that heed must be paid to the lapse of 
time since learning, to the working of initial or terminal 
inhibition, and so forth. 

So much for a generalised law of associative tendency, 
derived from the work with meaningless syllables ! That 
is a law of nervous action; now let us turn to psychology, 
and see if we can formulate a law of mental connection. 
We shall be dealing with perceptions and ideas ; and 
we shall be dealing with them as experiences, made up 
of core and context (p. 117). 

Attention is again necessary. Intention, on the 
other hand, seems not to be necessary; there need be 
no special purpose behind the experiences, as the inten- 
tion to learn is behind the experiments with meaning- 
less syllables ; attention is enough. The idea of a 
surgical operation, for instance, may be permanently 
connected with the idea of the surgeon who performed 
it, although the intervention of that particular surgeon 
was quite casual and unexpected. The reason is that 
attention brings a situation, its own situation, with it; 
the determinants of primary attention are, as we put 
it on p. 97, the ' great biological stimuli,' things that 
an organism must take notice of, if it is to persist as a 
living organism at all ; and the determinants of derived 
primary attention are also what we may call ' situational ' 



1 66 Association 

affairs, things that appeal in certain circumstances to 
certain sides of our nature, things that interest or ' im- 
press ' us. So attention, too, implies a set or disposition 
of the nervous system ; common sense is so far in the right 
— though its words are misleading — when it talks of a 
'concentration of the mind,' of 'pulling oneself together,' 
and the like ; and this general set is sufficient, without the 
presence of a distinct purpose. Our law will read, then, 
somewhat to this effect : // a number of vivid perceptions 
or ideas, whose situational context is the same, occur to- 
gether under favourable conditions, then the later appear- 
ance in the same situational context of any one will tend 
to be accompanied, according to circumstances, by the 
reappearance (as ideas) of the others. 

That is correct, so far as it goes ; though, as we shall 
see in a moment, it does not go quite far enough. Mean- 
while, you must clearly realise that the processes which 
compose the perceptions and ideas are extremely variable. 
We have already discussed this matter; we have seen 
that the perception of an object and the idea of the same 
object do not by any means correspond, term for term, 
like original and copy; the form of our ideas depends, 
in the first instance, upon our imaginal type, and second- 
arily upon the special circumstances under which they 
appear (pp. 139 f.). When, therefore, we speak of ' the 
later appearance of an idea in the same situational 
context,' we really mean the appearance of that com- 
plex of mental processes which, under the law of imag- 
inal type and under the special circumstances of the 
moment, has taken the place of the original complex. 
In the next chapter we shall be discussing the ' memory- 



§ 36. The Law of Mental Connection 167 

image,' and you will then be shown how radically an 
idea may be transformed ; so radically, that it may be 
likened rather to a translation than a copy of the per- 
ception, rather to a rendering into another language 
than a reproduction. If you want a catch-phrase, to 
hold this fact of change in mind, think of association as 
a marriage by proxy; the marriage-bond, the situational 
context, remains the same, but the parties are repre- 
sented by very variable mental complexes. 

Now for the law once more ! The formula does not 
go far enough; for while it covers the movement of ideas 
within a single situational context, it does not show how 
we may pass, as we undoubtedly do, from one situational 
context to another. Here a diagram will, perhaps, make 
things plain. Suppose that we start out with an idea 



a, composed of core and context, and lying within the 
wider situational context of the right-hand oval. The 
appearance of a is followed, let us assume, by the reap- 
pearance of b, which lies within the same situational 
context. The idea b may be followed, in its turn, by c. 
But since b belongs also to a second situation, repre- 
sented by the left-hand oval, it may be followed instead 
by the idea x ; and in that event we shall have travelled 
from the one situational context to the other. Whether 
c or x comes up is a matter which depends entirely upon 
the relative strength of the associative tendencies at 



1 68 Association 

the moment. The diagram, it is needless to say, is 
immensely over-simplified; we have placed a, c, and x 
within one situational context only, and we have made 
the ideas follow one another in single file ; but it shows 
how our formulation of the law must be extended, if we 
are to ' get in ' all the facts. We must add : If certain 
of these reappearing ideas belong also to a different situa- 
tional context, they will tend to be accompanied, again 
according to circumstances, by the ideas which formerly 
occurred together (as perceptions or ideas) within that 
context. In point of fact, most ideas belong to very 
many different situations, so that the interweaving of 
the associative tendencies may be highly complicated. 

These paragraphs will strike you as both difficult and 
clumsy; but, if you review the course of the whole 
chapter, you will perhaps agree that our attempt at 
formulation has been worth while. We began with 
Aristotle's four rules, and found that they are logical 
and practical, and also that they may logically be re- 
duced to one, the ' law of association by contiguity.' 
That law did not satisfy us ; we agreed with James that 
the brain associates and that meanings are associated. 
So we went to the brain ; and by the aid of meaningless 
syllables we traced the history of the associative ten- 
dencies. Coming back to psychology proper, we dis- 
tinguished the fusion and the conjunction of mental 
processes, and noted that the experimental method does 
not yet permit us to follow the patterns of mental con- 
nection in the large; though the experiments already 
made furnish additional proof that the old • laws ' of 
association are psychologically valueless. Now, to con- 



§ 37- Practice, Habit, Fatigue 169 

elude, we have sought, first, to bring all that we know 
of the associative tendencies under a single formula ; 
and then, building upon that formula and upon our 
partial knowledge of the patterns of mental connection, 
to write a psychological law that shall replace the logi- 
cal law of contiguity. We have had to safeguard and 
qualify, and to leave loose ends for individual variation ; 
but at any rate we have something positive whereby 
to support our criticism of the doctrine of association. 

§37. Practice, Habit, Fatigue. — The establishment 
of an associative tendency may be looked upon as the 
establishment of a habit of brain-function ; the learning 
of series of syllables improves with practice; and con- 
tinued learning gives rise to fatigue. It is natural, 
therefore, that we should here pause to say something 
about these three things in their relation to psychology. 

All practice begins in the state of attention; but prac- 
tice, once started, may go on when attention is distracted 
from the matter in hand. We give a great deal of atten- 
tion to our first finger-exercises on the piano ; presently, 
if we have continued them long enough, we may prac- 
tise Chopin on the clavier while we are reading a book 
or thinking out a problem ; the fingers do the practising 
for themselves. If we follow the course of practice, from 
day to day, we find that improvement is not steady; 
we gain very quickly at first, then come to a point at 
which we remain stationary for a while, then make 
another and slower gain, then rest at a second plateau or 
level of practice, and so on. It is doubtful, however, 
whether this stepwise advance is characteristic of prac- 



170 Association 

tice itself, that is, of the nervous change produced by 
repeated stimulation of the same nerve-elements; it 
seems rather to be due to changes in our method of 
working, to the sudden discovery of some new trick of 
procedure, or the sudden release from some hampering 
peculiarity of method. We cannot speak in positive 
terms since, unfortunately for psychology, the investi- 
gators of practice have been more concerned with out- 
ward results and practical value than with description 
of the correlated mental processes. 

In psychological experiments, the practised observer 
has a threefold superiority over the unpractised : his atti- 
tude to the stimuli, in successive observations, is more 
nearly uniform ; his attention is sustained at a higher 
level ; and his discrimination is more refined. This 
means that the focal mental processes are few in number ; 
that they are extremely vivid; and that they are pro- 
tected, by strong inhibitory forces, against intrusion 
from the outside. It is clear therefore that practice 
is very desirable ; but it is clear also that experimental 
results may be compared only if the stage of practice 
at which they are obtained is the same. This rule has 
some odd examples : an observer, for instance, who is 
practised in the discrimination of lifted weights grows 
physically stronger with his practice, and may there- 
fore judge quite differently from the unpractised ob- 
server. 

Habit is, in general, the outcome of practice ; if prac- 
tice shows us a nervous set or disposition in the making, 
habit is the set taken, the disposition established; the 
plastic organ has hardened in some special way. Like 



§ 37- Practice, Habit, Fatigue 171 

practice, habit in its early stages requires attention; but 
it is to be noticed that a habit may be formed, not only 
by the repetition that practice brings, but also by any 
single stimulus that violently impresses the nervous 
system ; the plastic mechanism may be thrown, by a 
sudden wrench, into a new and permanent arrangement ; 
just as we may give a permanent bend to a fencing foil by 
a single violent lunge. We have already seen, in our dis- 
cussion of the development of attention (p. 99), that 
habits already formed are the basis of new acquisition; 
and we may remark in passing that the moral and prac- 
tical importance of habit has often been written upon 
and can hardly be overestimated. 

In all experimental work of a serial kind, habit shows 
itself as a tendency to experience and report the same things. 
Suppose, for example, that we wish to ascertain the least 
perceptible difference of tonal pitch. We begin with 
two identical tones, and gradually separate them in the 
successive experiments of the series. The observer 
begins with the experience and report of ' same ' or 
' alike.' If, now, the differences between the tones are 
made very small, so that the series of observations is 
long drawn out, the observer may get into the habit of 
hearing and reporting ' same ' ; although the tonal 
difference is definitely perceptible, it nevertheless passes 
without notice. The focal processes are here, as they 
are in the case of practice, few in number ; but they run 
their course at a low level of attention ; they are intrin- 
sically obscure, and the report of them simply follows 
the line of least resistance. The observer is correspond- 
ingly liable to distraction from the outside ; the inhibi- 



172 Association 

tory protection is weak. Habituation is consequently 
to be avoided, as practice is to be desired. 

Fatigue appears to be due to a sort of blood-poison- 
ing ; waste-products thrown off by the other tissues are 
poured into the blood-stream and there accumulate. 
It shows itself first of all by way of muscular sensation 
(p. 46), and soon becomes a sense-feeling ; whereupon 
the biological theory of feeling lays hold of it (p. 84), 
and bids us stop work because we are suffering harm. 
The feeling of fatigue, however, gives no sure evidence that 
the capacity of the nervous system is reduced; the biologi- 
cal theory signally breaks down ; not only can we work 
effectively, but we often do our best work, after we have 
begun to feel tired. We should take our cue to rest 
not from the feeling of fatigue, but rather from the im- 
pairment of our work, in quantity and quality, on the 
one hand, and from derangement of the great bodily 
functions, such as digestion and sleep, on the other. 

In psychological experiments, fatigue lowers the level 
and lessens the duration of attention, and so, like habitua- 
tion, makes against discrimination ; unlike habitua- 
tion, it tends also to inhibit expression, and thus renders 
the observer's report hesitating and uncertain. It is 
characterised, unlike practice and habituation both, 
by a special mental complex ; a diffused feeling of lassi- 
tude which may be dominated by some local strain or 
pain. 

In conclusion, we may mention that a great deal of 
controversy has centred about the questions whether 
special practice has a general or a merely local effect, and 
whether general fatigue may be estimated from the results 



§ 37- Practice, Habit, Fatigue 173 

of some special and local test. The first question may 
be answered in the words of Professor Thorndike : 
" One mental function or activity improves others in 
so far as and because they are in part identical with it, 
because it contains elements common to them. These 
identical elements may be in the stuff, the data concerned 
in the training, or in the attitude, the method taken with 
it." The second question cannot yet be answered. 
We have every reason to think that fatigue is every- 
where and always one and the same state, that mental 
and muscular fatigue, for instance, are identical ; if we 
are mentally fatigued, we get rest neither by a change 
of mental work nor by physical exertion. But no single 
test or index of the danger-point of fatigue has yet been 
discovered. 



174 Association 

Questions and Exercises 

(i) Criticise the following statements. (A good plan 
would be, first, to go behind the expression to the meaning, 
and to make sure of that ; then to take up precisely the op- 
posite position, and see what can be said for it; and then 
finally to write your comments on the statements themselves.) 

(a) When two elementary brain-processes have been active 
together or in immediate succession, one of them, on re- 
occurring, tends to propagate its excitement into the other. 

(b) There is no tendency on the part of simple ' ideas,' at- 
tributes, or qualities to remind us of their like, (c) Asso- 
ciation marries only universals. (d) Brick is one complex 
idea, mortar is another complex idea; these ideas, with 
ideas of position and quantity, compose my idea of a wall. 

W. James, Principles of Psychology, i., 1890, 566, 579; F. H. Bradley, 
in Mind, xii., 1887, 358; J. Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the 
Human Mind, i., 1869, 115. 

(2) How does the dominance of associationism in British 
psychology throw light upon the psychology of the nation 
itself? 

(3) What sort of service could the doctrine of association 
render to psychology? 

(4) Can you give specific reasons for the fact that too long 
a series of syllables throws the learner into confusion? and 
for the advantage that results from distribution of the series 
in time? 

(5) Do you think that the quick or the slow learner has the 
better chance to retain what he has learned ? Have you any 
evidence ? 

(6) Associative tendencies decay with time; yet we have 
said that the practised speaker drops his speech, and lets 
his brain incubate it. Is there not a contradiction here? 
Consider the two cases carefully. 

(7) Can you give instances, from your own recent experi- 
ence, of the working of initial and terminal inhibition? 



Questions and Exercises 175 

(8) Later writers have added to the four ' laws ' of Aristotle 
(similarity, contrast, succession, coadjacency) various other 
laws: means and end, cause and effect, whole and part, 
thing and properties, sign and thing signified, and so on. 
Can you suggest any reason for these additions? Can you 
give an instance under every ' law,' and reduce it psycho- 
logically to our own law of association? Try to get real 
instances, taken from your own or your friends' experi- 
ence. 

(9) Trace the connection of mental processes in your own 
case as follows. An experimenter prepares a set of simple 
pictures, and arranges to show them for 3 sec. by removal 
and replacement of a- cardboard screen. Sit at a convenient 
distance, and let the stimulus have its way with you ; report 
your mental processes as they come ; the experimenter writes 
down what you say. Try to give the facts, and not to express 
yourself in meanings. Do not be discouraged if the task 
seems, at first, to be too difficult. 

(10) (a) Can you give any reason why your work might 
be unusually good when you are feeling a little tired? 
(b) What is the relation of interest to practice ? 

(11) State, in your own words, what the doctrine of asso- 
ciation professes to do, and what cardinal mistake it falls 
into when it tries to do it. 

(12) (a) Write out, in common-sense terms, the facts 
that the law of mental connection has to translate into 
psychological language. Next, write out, in your own words, 
the law itself. Now compare your formulation with that of 
the text: do they tally? If not, do you understand the 
difference? Do not be satisfied to leave any point obscure. 

(b) Show that the law of mental connection does justice, as 
the older ' laws ' of association do not, to the facts of §35. 

(c) You often read in fiction of situations whose every detail 
makes an indelible impression; you will find one described, 
for instance, in Mrs. Deland's 'Philip and his Wife,' ch. xxix. 
Is the writer's psychology sound? 



176 Association 

References 

W. James, Principles of Psychology, i., 1890, chs. iv., xiv. ; 

F. H. Bradley, The Principles of Logic, 1883, 273 ff . ; H. 
Ebbinghaus, Memory, trs. H. A. Ruger and C. E. Busse- 
nius, 1913 ; C. S. Myers, A Text-book of Experimental 
Psychology, i., 1911, chs. xii., xiii. ; 0. Kuelpe, Outlines of 
Psychology, 1909, 169 ff. ; E. B. Titchener, A Text-book of 
Psychology, 1910, 374 ff. ; M. Offner, Mental Fatigue, trs. 

G. M. Whipple, 191 1; E. L. Thorndike, Educational Psy- 
chology, ii., 1913 ; E. Meumann, The Psychology of Learn- 
ing, trs. J. W. Baird, 1913. 



CHAPTER VII 

Memory and Imagination 

Inventors seem to treasure up in their minds, what they have found 
out, after another manner than those do the same things, who have not 
this inventive faculty. The former, when they have occasion to produce 
their knowledge, are in some measure obliged immediately to investigate 
part of what they want. For this they are not equally fit at all times ; 
so it has often happened, that such as retain things chiefly by means of 
a very strong memory, have appeared off hand more expert than the 
discoverers themselves. — Henry Pemberton 

§ 38. Recognition. — The working of the associative 
tendencies in the brain guarantees the revival of past 
experiences ; it does not, so far as we have described 
it, guarantee that we remember. For memory, in the 
psychological sense, implies recognition; the remembered 
experience is not only revived, but is also familiar, comes 
to us as a bit of our own past history. We must try 
to find out what this familiarity is. 

Suppose that you are entering a street-car. As you 
enter, you run your eyes over the line of faces before 
you. The first half-dozen of your fellow-passengers 
are strangers ; their faces arouse no interest and do not 
arrest your gaze. At the end of the car, however, you 
see a friend whom you have not met, perhaps, for some 
time ; you recognise him. Your indifference is sud- 
denly gone; you call him by name, take a seat at his 
side, and begin to talk with him. What has happened ? 

N 177 



178 Memory and Imagination 

Something has happened that, if you analyse it, re- 
calls the first of the three connective patterns discussed 
on p. 161 . The visual perception of your friend is supple- 
mented by a verbal idea, his name. Along with the name 
comes a peculiar sense-feeling, a feeling that you may 
characterise as a glow of warmth, a feeling of intimacy, 
a feeling of sociable ease, of relaxation from the formal 
manner that you wear with strangers. And hardly 
has the feeling formed when ideas of sorts begin to 
crowd upon you, and the conversation starts. All this 
complexity of mental connection is there, and the whole 
experience may be called a recognition ; but we cannot, 
of course, accept it at its face- value ; we must still ask 
how much of it is essential, and whether one or more of 
the three factors — name, feeling, ideas — may be left 
out while recognition remains. 

Experiment shows that the one thing necessary to 
recognition is the feeling of familiarity. In some cases 
the incoming ideas, and more especially the direct ver- 
bal supplement of the perception, the name, seem to be 
integral factors in the experience ; but recognition is 
possible in their absence ; and, what is more, recogni- 
tion may fail in their presence ; a perception may call 
up ideas that are objectively correct, and yet there may 
be no recognition of the thing perceived. Recognition, 
then, is essentially a feeling, a sense-feeling of the agree- 
able and relaxing type, diffusively organic in its sensory 
character; any perception or idea to which this feeling 
attaches is, by that very fact, the perception or idea of 
something recognised. That is as far as analysis can 
take us. If we care to go further, and speculate, we may 



§ 38. Recognition 179 

venture to guess that the feeling of familiarity is a weak- 
ened survival of the emotion of relief, of fear unfulfilled. 
There is a distinct touch of pleasurable relief, of the 
letting-down of strain, in the feeling as we have it; 
and the derivation is therefore psychologically reason- 
able. Moreover, primitive man was so defenceless an 
animal that the strange must always have been cause 
for anxiety ; language, indeed, bears witness on the 
point ; for ' fear ' is, etymologically, the state of mind 
of the traveller, the ' farer ' away from home ; and 
' hostis,' which we translate enemy, originally meant 
simply stranger. The bodily and mental attitude which 
expresses recognition thus seems to be still the attitude 
of going off guard, of ease and confidence. In our every- 
day life, as you will readily see, the tinge of sense-feel- 
ing may be overlaid by the heavier colours of some posi- 
tive emotion ; we may recognise an acquaintance with 
whom we are heartily angry, or whose conduct has 
brought us sorrow ; primitive man himself recognised 
. his enemies ! But in the laboratory, where these dis- 
turbing influences are ruled out, the nature of the feel- 
ing of familiarity comes clearly to light; intrinsically, 
recognition is always an agreeable and relaxing experi- 
ence. 

In everyday life, again, our recognitions may be of all 
degrees of definiteness. They are indefinite when the 
feeling of familiarity comes up alone, without the name 
or the associated ideas ; when, for instance, we pass 
someone on the street, and say to our companion " I'm 
sure I know that face ! " and so pass on. They are 
somewhat more definite when the perception is supple- 



180 Memory and Imagination 

merited by a general name. As we glance down the 
line of strangers in the street-car we may think to our- 
selves " doctor, — farmer, — commercial traveller, — 
soldier " ; the feeling of familiarity then represents our 
recognition of the class. Lastly, they are definite when 
one or more of the contributory factors — the name, 
the organic stir of the feeling, the incoming ideas — 
carry an unequivocal reference to our past experience, 
mean some definite incident of our past life. We chance 
to overhear a name in conversation; and "Why," we 
break in, " that's the man I went up the Gross Glockner 
with in '98 ! " — the recognition is definite. There is 
no real psychological difference between the three cases; 
the difference lies only in the range of meaning which 
the contextual processes carry. 

There is a psychological difference, however, between 
all the cases of recognition which we have hitherto 
mentioned and certain other cases : a difference between 
direct and indirect recognition. The recognition is direct 
when the perception at once, of itself, calls up the recogni- 
tive feeling. It is indirect when the feeling attaches, 
not directly to the perception, but to some idea or some 
other perception connected with the given perception. 
We pass a stranger on the street ; but we are suddenly 
hailed by a familiar voice ; the recognition of the voice 
makes us look hard at the stranger's face, and we then 
recognise him as an old college friend. We try to find 
our host's face in a group-photograph of schoolboys, 
and we are wholly puzzled to identify him ; the face is 
pointed out in the picture, and we turn from it to the 
mature face with which we are familiar ; the photograph 



§ 39- Direct Apprehension 181 

grows more and more like, the more closely we compare 
the two ; presently we get a sudden conviction of their 
identity, the recognition of the photograph is complete, 
and we wonder that we could have failed to pick the 
right boy at the outset. In both these instances, recog- 
nition hinges on the feeling of familiarity ; but something 
else happens, something that reminds us of the second 
connective pattern of p. 161, where an idea is read into 
a perception, or the perception resolved into an idea. 
There are times, too, when recognition is halting and 
partial, when the feeling of familiarity alternates with 
a feeling of strangeness ; in such experiences the play of 
associative tendencies may be extremely complex. 

§ 39. Direct Apprehension. — We saw on p. 120 that 
meaning, which was at first a fringe of mental processes, 
a contextual setting of some bit of bare experience, may 
in course of time be carried by nerve-processes which 
have no mental correlates of any kind. The same thing 
seems to hold of recognition. We do not, in strictness, 
' recognise ' the clothes that we put on every morning, 
or the desk at which we are accustomed to write; we 
apprehend them, directly, as our clothes and our desk ; 
we take them for granted. The feeling of familiarity, 
the feeling of being at home with our own things, changes 
first to something that is still a feeling, though weaker 
and more nebulous ; to something that we may describe 
as an ' of-course ' feeling, which is still some distance 
away from sheer indifference. As the days and weeks 
go on, this of-course feeling itself dies out ; the stimuli 
no longer have power to arouse a feeling at all, and the 



1 8 2 Memory and Imagination 

organism faces the habitual situations without any or- 
ganic stir. We apprehend the clothes and desk as ours, 
precisely as we perceive the tree and the piano as spa- 
tial (p. 115). In experiments on the recognition of greys, 
the author has reported positively that a particular 
grey had been seen before, without being able to find 
anything whatsoever, in the way of verbal idea or kin aes- 
thetic quiver or organic thrill, that might carry the 
meaning of familiarity; the brain-habit just touched 
off the report ' Yes,' and that was all that could 
be said. 

That brain-habit, however, had a psychological history 
behind it; and the history shows itself whenever our direct 
apprehension is in some manner disturbed or prevented. 
We reach out to our inkstand, and find that the pen 
which always lies in it has disappeared; or we glance 
round the breakfast-room, and notice that a picture 
which always hangs upon a certain wall has gone. We 
have not been wont to recognise the pen and the pic- 
ture ; they were just matters of course. Now that they 
are absent, however, the situation jars upon us; we 
have a pronounced feeling of helplessness or of displeased 
surprise. That is as far, perhaps, as ordinary observa- 
tion goes ; but there is really more to be observed. 
For at the moment of disturbance, before the disagree- 
able feeling has arisen, the ' of -course ' feeling springs 
up in unusual strength ; it is as if, for a brief space, we 
reverted in imagination to a true recognition of the miss- 
ing object. And even after the displeasure is there, we 
may go back more than once to the familiar state of 
affairs ; we can't believe, as we say, we can't trust our 



§ 39- Direct Apprehension 183 

eyes, the thing has always been in that place; so that 
the glow of recognition alternates with the dominant 
feeling. In a word, the disturbance of apprehension has 
brought back to life certain stages in the past history of the 
brain-habit, stages in which the nerve-processes had as 
their correlates the mental processes that make up the 
feeling of familiarity. 

This passage of recognition, from the characteristic 
feeling of familiarity through the weaker of-course feel- 
ing into a sheer brain-habit or nervous set, illustrates 
the descending phase of a progression which is typical 
in psychology, and which is summed up in the law of 
mental growth and decay. We are constantly finding 
that a mental formation, a particular complex of mental 
processes, is at first thin and scant, then enriches itself 
by various supplementary processes, and then again 
thins out or tails off — finally, into mental nothingness ; 
and recognition illustrates the downward half of the 
curve. The law was strongly insisted on by the late 
G. H. Lewes, an author who wrote largely on psychologi- 
cal topics, but who is better known to the general reader 
from his association with George Eliot. " This pro- 
cess," Lewes tell us, " underlies all development. The 
voluntary actions become involuntary, the involuntary 
become automatic ; the intelligent become habitual, 
and the habitual become instinctive. It is the same 
in the higher regions of intellect : the slow acquisitions 
of centuries of research become condensed into axioms 
which are intuitions." We have already met the law 
in our discussions of attention and meaning; and we 
shall meet it again when we come to discuss action. 



184 Memory and Imagination 

§ 40. The Memory-Idea. — ■ But where, all this while, 
is the memory-image? If you had been asked, before 
you read the foregoing paragraphs, what happens when 
you recognise somebody or something, you would prob- 
ably have replied, as the associationists reply : ' The 
present sight of the object calls up an image of that 
object, by the law of similarity ; then the image or idea 
is compared with the perception, and the two are found 
to agree ; and this agreement is what I mean by recog- 
nition.' If it were then objected that observation fails 
to show any such idea or image, you would perhaps have 
said : ■ The whole thing takes place so quickly that the 
factors cannot ordinarily be distinguished ; but all the 
same that is what must happen.' And so you would 
have kept your faith in the image. 

Such an image may, in fact, appear. It may appear in 
the cases of halting and partial recognition that we 
referred to on p. 181 ; but it need not necessarily appear 
even there ; its intervention is, indeed, as rare as the 
third type of mental connection, the clean-cut succes- 
sion of p. 161. You will perhaps get at the heart of the 
matter most easily if we lay down, at once, the general 
principle that no imaginal process or complex of imaginal 
processes is in its own right a memory-idea. Even if 
the simple images which compose it are different from 
sensations (p. 77), it must still be called a complex 
image, and nothing more ; not an idea of memory. A 
complex of imaginal processes becomes, is made into, 
a memory-idea by an attendant feeling of familiarity; 
just exactly as a perception, a complex of sensory pro- 
cesses, is made into a recognition of something by the 



§ 4°- The Memory-Idea 185 

same feeling of familiarity. So that an idea, in order 
to be a memory-idea, must bear the memory-label; and 
the label will be either the sense-feeling of familiarity- 
proper, or else some weaker and more fleeting feeling 
of the ' of-course ' kind. It is true, again, that an idea 
which has lived through this history may be taken as 
a memory-idea when the label has dropped away ; but 
even then it is a memory-idea, not in its own right, but 
in right of the brain-habit behind it. No group of 
images, taken out of its mental setting or removed from 
the directive pressure of a brain-habit, can be known as 
a memory; it might be hallucination or dream or 
imagination or anything else; it is just a group of 
images. 

Our quarrel with popular psychology goes further 
still. The whole notion that a memory-idea is a copy of 
past experience is wrong; the idea may copy the per- 
ception, but it need not ; and usually it does not. You 
remember that, after we had formulated our own law of 
mental connection, we introduced the catch-phrase 
' marriage by proxy ' ; and you remember why. What, 
now, is the essential thing about a memory-idea ? Not, 
surely, that it should copy past experience, but that it 
should mean past experience. Our individual equip- 
ment of images is so variable (p. 139) that we should be 
very badly off if we were limited, in what we remember, 
to copies of our perceptions ; A , who has no visual images, 
could then remember nothing that he had seen, and B, 
who has no auditory images, could remember nothing 
that he had heard ! Such are the straits to which popu- 
lar psychology must logically reduce us. In point of 



1 86 Memory and Imagination 

fact, A remembers well enough what he has seen ; only, 
the visual parts of his experience are translated into 
other modes, perhaps verbal-motor. In that event a 
verbal-motor image, set in the right context and accom- 
panied by a feeling of familiarity, may mean for A some 
visual object that he perceived so many years since. 
It goes flat against common sense to assert that a verbal- 
motor image is the ' memory ' of the visual perception ; 
and yet that is just what the verbal-motor image, in 
its present setting, actually is. 

This translation of perception into imagery of another 
mode has curious consequences. I may declare posi- 
tively that I remember having heard Patti sing forty 
years ago, when all that I really remember is the state- 
ment itself, the form of words which carries my meaning. 
Nay more, if my mind is of the imaginal type, I may have 
taken my cue from the verbal statement, and have 
conjured up a mental picture of the performance, a pic- 
ture now so familiar that I could swear to the pink 
dress, — were it not that a contemporary notice writes 
it down as cream ! Words often repeated are in this way 
highly deceptive; and there is good psychology in the 
story of the traveller who told his romantic tales so often 
that he finally believed them himself. Many of us, if 
we would but confess it, remember things that happened 
before we were born ; the account of them was impressed 
on us in childhood, and was later bodied forth in images ; 
and now their ideas bear the memory-label. Here, 
then, is one source of the ' untrustworthiness ' of mem- 
ory, which is at the same time a possible source of the 
Platonic doctrine of reminiscence. 



§ 4i- Illusions of Recognition and Memory 187 

§41. Illusions of Recognition and Memory. — Psy- 
chologically, an illusory memory is a memory, just as 
an illusory perception is a perception. We speak of 
illusion when our experience fails to square with what, 
from our knowledge of external circumstances and of 
other like experiences, we might have expected; the 
distinction is therefore practical, not scientific. We shall 
avail ourselves of it, partly for convenience' sake, and 
partly because certain cases of illusion offer special 
problems to the psychologist. 

Most of us, probably, have an occasional acquaintance 
with what is called paramnesia or wrong recognition : 
a definite ' feeling that all this has happened before,' 
sometimes connected with a ' feeling that we know ex- 
actly what is coming,' — a ' feeling ' which persists for 
a few seconds and carries positive conviction, in spite 
of the fact and the knowledge that the experience is 
novel; Dickens gives an instance in David Copperfield. 
Various explanations have been offered of the phenom- 
enon. It occurs most frequently after periods of emo- 
tional stress, or in the state of extreme mental fatigue ; 
that is, at a time when the associative tendencies in the 
brain are abnormally weak ; and it seems to depend, es- 
sentially, upon a disjunction of mental processes that 
are normally held together in a single state of attention. 
Suppose the following case : you are about to cross a 
crowded street, and you take a hasty glance in both direc- 
tions to make sure of a safe passage. Now your eye is 
caught, for a moment, by the contents of a shop win- 
dow; and you pause, though only for a moment, to 
survey the window before you actually cross the street. 



1 88 Memory and Imagination 

Paramnesia would then appear as the feeling that you 
had already crossed; the preliminary glance up and 
down, which ordinarily connects with the crossing in a 
single attentive experience, is disjoined from the cross- 
ing ; the look at the window, casual as it was, has been 
able to disrupt the associative tendencies. As you cross, 
then, you think ' Why, I crossed this street just now ' ; 
your nervous system has severed two phases of a single 
experience, both of which are familiar, and the latter of 
which appears accordingly as a repetition of the earlier. 
The illusion will evidently be strengthened if, as is only 
natural, the casual look at the window does not recur 
to you. This is an imaginary case, simplified for clear- 
ness of exposition ; and we cannot be at all sure that 
the explanation which it suggests is correct; for cases 
of paramnesia cannot be realised at will, and the ner- 
vous condition that leads to them is not favourable to 
scientific observation ; but something of the sort must 
take place. 

Illusions of memory have been touched upon on p. 186. 
We may remember something that never happened ; we 
may remember something that happened, but could 
not have happened to us ; we make all kinds of mistakes 
in memory ; we fail to remember a great deal that has 
happened. These chances of error are inherent in the 
laws of associative tendency, and in the character of the 
memory-image. There is one illusion, however, that re- 
quires a word of comment : the illusion of the ' good old 
days,' the tendency of every man past middle age to be 
laudator temporis acti se puero. This has often been re- 
ferred to the principle that we remember pleasurable ex- 



§ 42. The Pattern of Memory 189 

periences better than unpleasurable ; we are so constituted, 
it is said, that the disagreeable events of our past life are 
forgotten and the agreeable are conserved in memory. 
The principle, however, has never been established, and 
there is some experimental evidence against it. In all 
probability, the illusion is due to many contributing fac- 
tors. First of all, our nervous system takes its general 
set in childhood ; it is then that we acquire standards 
of right and wrong, of social position, of daily inter- 
course and occupation. In so far as later experiences 
interfere with this set, the old order will be preferred. 
Secondly, our self-centredness (p. 2) leads us to idealise 
our past self ; we think of ourselves as more important, 
more heroic, more dominating, more regarded, not only 
than we were, but also than any youngster of our sort 
could possibly have been; autobiographies, however 
truthful in intention, bring out the point with sufficient 
clearness. So we contrast our present struggles with the 
triumphs of an unreal past. Thirdly, the old days were, 
in one sense, really happier for us than the new ; happier 
because we had no responsibilities, because there was a 
generation of adults to whom we could appeal ; and we 
are very prone to confuse our own greater comfort with 
a better status of society. These are obvious considera- 
tions, but they and things like them are enough to ac- 
count for the illusion. 

§ 42. The Pattern of Memory. — Psychology cannot 
yet offer any adequate description of the pattern that 
mental processes display, the arrangement that they 
fall into, when we are remembering. Memory, as we 



190 Memory and Imagination 

are all aware, may occur in the state of primary attention, 
when we call it remembrance, or in the state of second- 
ary attention, when we. call it recollection. Something 
may be said under both heads ; but our account must be 
largely figurative and conventional. 

Let us take remembrance first. There seems to be, 
as it were in the background, something that holds us 
down to a particular circle of ideas, or, in other words, 
that limits the play of ideas to some particular situa- 
tion. This something may be a group of contextual 
mental processes, or may be merely a nervous disposi- 
tion ; we shall have more to say of it later (§ 48) . Upon 
the background move mental processes of extraordinary 
instability, all of them tinged more or less strongly by 
the feeling of familiarity. Attention is labile and fluid ; 
the focus is occupied now by visual or other imagery, 
now by scraps of kinaesthesis, and now by organic or 
verbal processes that carry a personal meaning and refer- 
ence; and the whole mental stream contracts and ex- 
pands, pauses and hurries, and shows the most abrupt 
changes of direction. All of which is sadly vague ! but 
let the reader catch himself ' reminiscing,' and he will 
realise the general truth of the description, and also the 
extreme difficulty of making it more concrete. 

In recollection, the background is filled by the intent 
to recall; and this intent may, again, be constituted 
by contextual mental processes or carried by a nervous 
set. The course of recollection may then be character- 
ised as a reconstruction along the lines of least resistance. 
Some bit of imagery, some form of words comes up, and 
is at once met, so to say, by the feeling of familiarity. 



§ 42. The Pattern of Memory 191 

Further ideas present themselves, in more or less dis- 
orderly fashion, and the feeling plays upon them, accept- 
ing here and rejecting there, serving throughout the 
experience as a court of final appeal. Some of the ideas 
are directly recognised; some seem to force our accep- 
tance by their vividness ; some pass muster because 
familiar verbal ideas, names or phrases, are connected 
with them. Some, that leave us in doubt as they arise, 
are shelved for the time, to be judged later on, when the 
positive acceptances are done with ; and they are likely 
to be judged in the light of these acceptances, and of our 
general knowledge of the situation which we are trying 
to recall; even a weak recognitive feeling is enough to 
give them status. In and out among these ideas run 
threads of kinaesthesis, which imitate or repeat frag- 
ments of the original experience. There is thus a veri- 
table tangle of processes ; the situation is not reproduced 
in image, and its items read off in logical order; it is 
rather reconstructed; and the reconstruction follows, 
as has been said, the lines of least resistance at the mo- 
ment. Yet we are so accustomed to the logical order of 
speech that our narrative, as recollection proceeds, 
may give but little hint of the tangled interplay of ideas ; 
at most we may correct ourselves at points, or remark 
that just now we left something out. Observe the flow 
of mind itself, and the disorder is apparent. 

We may say, then, that the pattern of memory is a 
discursive movement within fixed boundaries; the bound- 
aries are given by the set or background, as we have 
named it, by the fact (in other words) that we are re- 
calling a particular situation or event; and the discur- 



192 Memory and Imagination 

siveness reveals itself in roaming of attention and shift 
of ideas, which imply a variable activity of the associa- 
tive tendencies. The characteristic processes are the 
feeling of familiarity and the imitative kincesthesis. 

§ 43. Mnemonics. — Rules for remembering, tricks 
of memorising, were considered of great importance in 
the ancient world; oratory was highly esteemed; and 
no orator before the time of Augustus would have ven- 
tured to use notes. As the art declined, these rules 
were less and less regarded ; we hear practically nothing 
of them between the first and the thirteenth centuries 
of the present era. From that date, however, interest 
in artificial memory-systems has never died out; they 
have been recommended for sermons, for lectures, for 
disputations, for public speeches, for the learning of 
foreign languages, for examinations, for practically every 
occasion in which memory is employed, as well as for 
the improvement of memory itself. 

The great principle of mnemonics is that you remember 
the novel and the disconnected by bringing it into arbitrary 
relation to the familiar and the connected. Everybody, for 
instance, is thoroughly at home in his own house; the 
positions of the rooms are known, and their employ- 
ment for the necessary purposes of the family holds 
them together. Suppose, then, that you are to deliver 
a speech, and that the speech has eight principal points. 
You think of yourself as entering the house : the first 
point you deposit in the hall, the second in the draw- 
ing-room, the third in the library, the fourth in the back 
hall, the fifth in the kitchen, the sixth in the pantry, the 



§ 43- Mnemonics 193 

seventh in the dining-room, the eighth on the upstairs 
landing. You think of yourself as making the separate 
points in these different places ; if possible, you invent 
some fanciful connection between the point and the 
place where you deposit it ; if, for example, your second 
or drawing-room point is an historical reference, you 
might think of ' drawing a hiss ' from your audience ; 
anything will do, provided it is the sort of thing to stick ! 
This local or topographical way of memorising has always 
been popular ; it is said that our ordinary phrases ' in 
the first place,' ' in the second place,' derive from it. 
Number-alphabets, in which certain letters stand for cer- 
tain figures, are also much employed ; dates, physical 
constants, statistical numbers, may thus be memorised. 
The rhythm of verse has been appealed to ; if you want 
to remember the seven cities that laid claim to the birth 
of Homer, you learn the hexameter-line ' Smyrna, 
Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodos, Argos, Athenae ' ; 
and you are helped — if further help is wanted — by the 
pattern of the initial letters SCCS-RAA. 

Such devices have a special and temporary utility; we 
have all taken examinations, and probably we have all 
had recourse to them on a larger or smaller scale. Many 
of us have paid the not infrequent penalty; we have 
remembered our mnemonic doggerel, but have forgotten 
the key to it, and so have forgotten the events or num- 
bers that it was meant to recall ; there is always that 
danger. No scheme of memory-aids that is universally 
applicable and universally reliable has been or can be 
discovered; there is no royal road to learning. In so 
far as a mnemonic rule follows the laws of associative 



194 Memory and Imagination 

tendency, as for many minds the local or topographical 
rule seems to do; or in so far as it chimes with some 
peculiarity of individual thinking; in so far, it will be 
of practical service in daily life ; that is the most that 
can be said. 

§ 44. The Idea of Imagination. — We think of mem- 
ory as reproducing the old, and of imagination, no less 
positively, as producing the new; the very word poet 
means the maker, and the word artist means the fitter 
or joiner. Imagination cannot, of course, give us new 
qualities of experience ; we cannot imagine a new colour, 
different from all known colours, or a new sensation — 
say, a specific sensation of electricity — different from 
the known sensations of skin and underlying tissues. 
Imagination does, however, give us novel connections; 
and experiment shows that an idea comes to us as im- 
agined only if it comes as unfamiliar, with the feeling 
of novelty or strangeness upon it. 

In real life, the feeling of strangeness is soon swamped 
by alien feelings, by the artist's joy or pride, dissatis- 
faction or despair ; in the laboratory, it appears strongly 
by itself. The observers speak of a feeling of novelty, 
of personal detachment, of creepiness, of weirdness, of 
something out of the ordinary, of peculiar discomfort. 
Compare this list of terms with a sentence from Lafcadio 
Hearn's last book : " The outward strangeness of things 
in Japan produces a queer thrill impossible to describe, 
— a feeling of weirdness which comes to us only with 
the perception of the totally unfamiliar " ; there is no 
doubt that the same experience is intended. It is, at 



§ 44- The Idea of Imagination 195 

first thought, a little surprising that an idea of imagina- 
tion, which after all derives from the observers' own ex- 
perience, and which is obtained under the rather tame 
and colourless conditions of a psychological experiment, 
should have so strong a tinge of feeling. Yet we need 
not be surprised ; for we have already learned that the 
novel stimulus has power to compel the attention; it 
stands alone and unrelated; and for that reason it 
startles and arrests us (p. 94). If the ideas aroused in 
the laboratory mattered, if they were practically im- 
portant for their owners' careers, then the feeling of 
strangeness would, as we have said, be overborne by 
other feelings; but they do not matter, and so can be 
developed and observed for what they are. 

An idea, then, becomes or is made into an idea of 
imagination by its mental setting, which is this feeling 
of strangeness, the opposite of the feeling of familiarity. 
As regards the nature of the feeling, we may guess that 
it is the modern representative of primitive man's anxiety 
and uneasiness in face of the unknown, an echo from the 
time when the new was the dangerous (p. 179). If the 
idea is often repeated, the feeling wears off, and is re- 
placed by a directive brain-habit ; we still take it as an 
idea of imagination, but we do not re-imagine it. If it 
is still further repeated, it ceases even to be taken as 
imaginative, and becomes one of the habitual images 
that we spoke of on p. 77. 

There is a second difference between the idea of imag- 
ination and the idea of memory : the difference, namely, 
that the former cannot be replaced by another mode of 
imagery. An idea of imagination must not simply mean 



196 Memory and Imagination 

something new ; it must be something new. We know 
that images of imagination are not indispensable to 
artistic work ; painters do not necessarily possess visual 
imagery (p. 141). Where the idea of imagination does 
exist, however, it keeps its original form. The French 
mural painter Puvis de Chavannes used to contemplate, 
for days together, the bare spaces that he was to fill; 
1 wasting time,' a friend told him, and received the reply 
" I have to see my picture before I can paint it." In a 
case like this, the mental picture — though it may be 
modified as the actual colours are laid on, or as new out- 
lines suggest themselves to the painter — must, so far 
as it furnishes a guide and model, hold its form and 
colour-scheme almost as fixedly as a perception ; other- 
wise it would be useless. So a man may be a very good 
musician, and possess no auditory images. Yet Beetho- 
ven composed his Ninth Symphony in 1823, when he 
had long been deaf ; and he could not even have helped 
his mental ear by the kinaesthesis of singing, since with- 
out special education the deaf soon lose control of the 
larynx. In his case, therefore, the auditory imagina- 
tion must not only have held good, but must also have 
grown more complex and more keenly discriminative, 
up to the very end. No doubt, he was aided by the 
eye ; the symphony grew on paper, a theme at a time ; 
and, no doubt also, he used his general knowledge of 
what would sound aright and what would not ; he was 
a practised composer. But, when all allowance is made, 
his main reliance must have been on auditory imagery, 
and this must have remained as stable as auditory per- 
ception. Such instances prove that the idea of imagina- 



§ 45- The Pattern of Imagination 197 

Hon runs a different course from the idea of memory. The 
memory-idea is common to all minds ; it persists as 
meaning, under the limitations of imaginal type and the 
general laws of associative tendency. The idea of im- 
agination seems to depend rather upon special endowment; 
it persists in kind, also under the limitations of imaginal 
type; and it is conserved by some special grouping or 
' convergence ' of associative tendencies (p. 158). We do 
not hesitate to describe a man as ' wholly lacking in 
imagination,' though we should look upon a total lack 
of memory as a sign of mental incompetence ; and the 
common phrase brings out, well enough, this personal 
or idiosyncratic character of the idea of imagination. 

§ 45. The Pattern of Imagination. — Imagination, like 
memory, may occur in the state of primary or of second- 
ary attention. In the former case we call it receptive, 
in the latter case constructive imagination. 

What happens in receptive imagination is, in principle, 
very simple. We are confronted by new perceptions or 
ideas, and we supplement these experiences by complex 
images of the appropriate kind. We read, for instance, a 
traveller's account of an African forest, and we picture 
the forest as we read ; we receive the score of a new song, 
and the melody sings itself to us as we run our eye over 
the printed notes; we stand upon an historic site, and 
rehearse in image the scenes that it has witnessed. A 
certain definite direction is given to our ideas by the 
presented stimuli ; then the ideas, as they come in their 
predetermined order, are supplemented in this imaginal 
way. 



198 Memory and Imagination 

The characteristic feeling of strangeness, in such cases, 
is often interfused with an experience which might, at 
first sight, seem incompatible with it ; the ' feeling ' of 
our own concernment in the imagined situation. We have 
a natural tendency to feel ourselves into what we per- 
ceive or imagine. As we read about the forest, we may, 
as it were, become the explorer ; we feel for ourselves 
the gloom, the silence, the humidity, the oppression, the 
sense of lurking danger ; everything is strange, but it is 
to us that the strange experience has come. We are 
told of a shocking accident, and we gasp and shrink 
and feel nauseated as we imagine it ; we are told of some 
new and delightful fruit, and our mouth waters as if we 
were about to taste it. This tendency to feel oneself 
into a situation is called empathy, — on the analogy of 
sympathy, which is feeling together with another; and 
empathic ideas are psychologically interesting, because 
they are the converse of perceptions : their core is 
imaginal, and their context is made up of sensations, the 
kinesthetic and organic sensations that carry the em- 
pathic meaning. Like the feeling of strangeness, they 
are characteristic of imagination. In memory, their 
place is taken by the imitative experiences, which re- 
peat over again certain phases of the original situation. 

What happens in constructive imagination is not so 
easy to say. Genius is defined sometimes as the capacity 
of doing great things without effort, and sometimes as 
the capacity of taking infinite pains; and constructive 
imagination, in the same way, is represented now as a 
native gift that finds rather than seeks expression, and 
now as a sort of skilled labour, a matter of planning and 



§ 45- The Pattern of Imagination 199 

moulding and constructing. There is probably truth on 
both sides, and a degree of truth that varies with the 
individual make-up of the artist; in general, however, 
there is more hard, work and less inspiration than is 
usually supposed. The poet or the inventor starts out 
with a more or less definite plan or aim or ambition; 
and the plan persists, if only as a nervous disposition, to 
determine the course of his ideas. It also helps to initiate 
the imaginative complex, the first clue to which seems 
in fact to come, at least ordinarily, as an inspiration, a 
happy thought ; some external situation, or some group- 
ing of the associative tendencies that is active at the 
moment, touches off the disposition, and the initial 
idea flashes into mind. Whether this first idea is crude 
or complete, and whether the stream of later ideas is 
broad or narrow, these things depend altogether upon 
circumstances. Now, at any rate, begins the stage of 
skilled labour ; the idea is worked upon and worked over ; 
the plan decides what shall be accepted, what rejected, 
what put aside for another trial ; we are reminded of 
the course of recollection, — only that rejection, active 
as it is in memory, is still more to the fore in imagina- 
tion, and construction is more critical than reconstruc- 
tion. Here and there other happy thoughts may crop 
up ; but in essentials this stage of hard work continues, 
until the idea attains its final expression in objective 
terms, in the words of the poem, for instance, or in the 
effective machine. Meantime, there have been all sorts 
of feelings. The imaginative ideas bring with them their 
own feeling of strangeness; but this may be -over- 
whelmed by the joy of success or the irritation of failure ; 



200 Memory and Imagination 

and these feelings may themselves alternate, swinging 
from extreme to extreme. Meantime, also, there have 
been all sorts of empathic experiences, which have 
formed about the focal processes, vivifying and per- 
sonalising the partial products of the constructive effort ; 
and they too find their natural term in the actual ac- 
complishment of the imaginative task. Figurative, 
again, all this, and lamentably far from scientific 
accuracy, — but, in broad outline and on the average, 
we may hope that it is true to the psychological facts. 

How, now, does the pattern of imagination compare 
with that of memory? We saw that the memory- 
pattern is that of discursive movement within fixed 
boundaries, the limits set by the fixity of the past oc- 
currence which is remembered. Imagination, on the 
other hand, is a more or less steady flow, in a single 
direction, from the fountain-head of disposition ; there 
are no limits of any kind, save those of individual 
capacity and experience ; but the course is determined by 
the initial plan or ambition. Memory is discursive 
movement within fixed boundaries • imagination is pro- 
gressive movement from a constant source. Memory is 
characterised by the feeling of familiarity and by imitative 
kincesthesis ; imagination by the feeling of strangeness and 
by empathy. 



Questions and Exercises 201 

Questions and Exercises 

(1) Memory, like recognition, may be definite or indefinite, 
direct or indirect. Can you give instances from your own 
experience ? 

(2) Suppose that you were required to write a defence of 
cramming. Could you find materials in these two chapters? 

(3) Memory fails as old age comes on; it decays, as we 
say, in old age ; and the course of decay is well-marked and 
uniform. Can you give any account of it? And can you 
explain the course from statements made in these two chap- 
ters? 

(4) Do you think that memory can be improved? Be 
sure, before you answer, that you have read a clear meaning 
into the question. Give reasons for your answer. 

(5) It has been said that we have no memory, but only 
memories. In what sense or senses is this statement true? 

(6) Memory has been described as a storehouse of ideas, 
as a power to revive perceptions, as a universal function of 
organic matter, and as decaying sense. Try to realise 
clearly what the users of these phrases had in mind ; say what 
you can in their favour; show in what respects they are 
inadequate to the psychology of memory. 

(7) Can you give instances of empathy, from your own 
experience : in the reading of history or fiction, in the viewing 
of architecture or landscape, in watching an actor or a musi- 
cian or an athlete, in day-dreaming? Describe as accurately 
as you can the different ' feel ' of empathy and sympathy ; 
do not be satisfied with meanings. 

(8) (a) Read Hawthorne's preface to The House of the 
Seven Gables and G. P. Lathrop's Introduction. What 
light do they throw on the mechanics of constructive imagina- 
tion ? (b) Read Poe's essay on The Philosophy of Composi- 
tion. Is the writer's psychology sound? Do you take him 
to have been wholly sincere ? Why? Be definite. 

(9) It has been suggested that the pattern of constructive 



202 Memory and Imagination 

imagination might be studied in the first drafts (where the 
manuscripts have been preserved) of poems, especially of lyric 
poems. What have you to say to the plan? 

(10) Has imagination, in the ordinary sense, any place in 
science? Can you justify your answer in psychological 
terms ? 

(n) A recent writer declares that " the idea of a centaur 
is a complex mental picture composed of the ideas of man and 
horse." The statement is unpsychological in the highest 
degree. Why ? 

(12) What have you to say, from what you have learned of 
receptive imagination, (a) of book-illustrations in general, 
(b) of Cruikshank's and Seymour's and Browne's illustrations 
of Dickens, and (c) of an illustrated edition of George Mere- 
dith's works? 

References 

Quintilian, Institutes of the Orator, bk. xi'., ch. 2 ; G. H. 
Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind, i., 1874, 229 ; W. James, 
Principles of Psychology, i., 1890, ch. xvi. ; E. Hering, On 
Memory, 1895 ; T. Ribot, Diseases of Memory, 1882 ; 
Essay on the Creative Imagination, 1906 ; E. B. Titchener, 
Text-book of Psychology, 1910, 396 ff. ; a series of articles by 
F. Kuhlmann, in American Journal of Psychology, 1905, 
1907, 1909; Psychological Review, 1906; Journal of Phi- 
losophy Psychology and Scientific Methods, 1907 ; articles on 
Imagination, Memory, Mnemonic Verses, in Dictionary of 
Philosophy and Psychology, 1901-2 ; article on Cram, by 
W. S. Jevons, in Mind, ii., 1877, 193 ff. 



CHAPTER VIII 1 

Instinct and Emotion 

Ie considere que, des le premier moment que nostre ame a este 
iointe au corps, il est vray-semblable qu'elle a senty de la ioye, & incon- 
tinent apres de l'amour, puis peut-estre aussi de la haine, & de la tris- 
tesse; & que les mesmes dispositions du corps, qui ont pour lors cause 
en elles ces passions, en ont naturellement par apres acompagne les pen- 
sees. — Rene Descartes 

§ 46. The Nature of Instinct. — We left the sense-feel- 
ings a long time ago (§ 18), though we have made oc- 
casional reference to them and to emotion in recent para- 
graphs. Now we return to the feeling-side of mind ; but 
we must begin with an account of instinct, which is re- 
lated both to emotion and to action. 

Instinct and reason are familiar catch-words of popular 
psychology. Animals are said to act ' on instinct,' 
while man, at any rate in his specifically human capacity, 
acts ' by reason.' The terms, as thus used, are not 
descriptive but explanatory. Just as a mental con- 
nection is supposed to be explained by similarity or con- 
tiguity of ideas (p. 146), so a particular activity or per- 
formance is supposed to be explained when we have 
labelled it ' instinctive ' or ' rational.' But what is 
instinct ? 

// we observe the behaviour of the lower animals, we find 
two sorts of response to stimulation : the one points to the 
working of an inherited nervous mechanism, the other 

203 



204 Instinct and Emotion 

depends upon nervous connections formed during the 
life-time of the individual. The second year's bird builds 
the nest of its species, though it has never built a nest 
before ; the cage-reared migrant beats its wings against 
the bars at the approach of winter, though it has never 
taken flight to the southward. Here is behaviour 
that we must refer to innate nervous tendencies, to the 
working of an inherited nervous mechanism. If, on 
the other hand, the parent birds come to the window-sill 
and take crumbs from our hand, we are in presence of 
behaviour of the second type. The difference, in the 
broad, is clear enough ; only we must not press it too 
far. The second year's bird, we say, builds the nest of 
its species; but one nest is never quite like another; 
something will depend upon the situation. Contrari- 
wise, the birds would not come to the window if they 
had not an innate attraction to food, or a natural boldness 
of disposition, or a native tendency to flock with their 
fellows. The two sorts of behaviour can be distin- 
guished ; but they are likely to enter together, though 
in unequal degree, into one and the same performance. 
Instinct, now, is the general name for these innate 
tendencies to behaviour. The word explains nothing; 
it is the business of science to find out what the in- 
herited nervous mechanisms are, and how they work; 
but though nothing is explained, we are helped by the 
term toward a classification of the facts of behaviour. All 
of man's conduct will be instinctive, for example, that 
can be shown to issue from innate nervous tendencies; 
and further, all of man's conduct will be in so far instinc- 
tive as innate nervous tendencies can be shown to 



§ 46. The Nature of Instinct 205 

have a share in producing it. How large a part, then, 
does instinct, in this sense, play in the life of man ? Not 
a question that can be answered offhand ! For you 
might argue, as has been argued, that because man is the 
most flexible and adaptable and teachable of all animals, 
because he lives in all climates and thrives in the most 
varied conditions of life, therefore he has but few in- 
stincts. Or you might argue that, since man has under- 
gone more change and has progressed further than any 
other animal ; since his evolutionary history, though 
not longer in time, is richer in biological incident than 
that of the other animals ; therefore he must have a 
great variety of instincts, or at any rate a great variety 
of inherited nervous mechanisms that help to guide and 
shape his conduct. What are the facts ? 

If we try to work out a rough list of human instincts, 
we find, at the lower end of the scale, a number of 
definite modes of response to particular stimuli; such 
things as coughing, sneezing, swallowing, smiling, 
threading our way in the street, beating time to music ; 
or, in the baby, such things as sucking, clasping, biting, 
turning the head aside, standing, creeping, walking, cry- 
ing, vocalising. At the upper end of the scale, we find 
gross general tendencies : the tendency to take the world 
of perception as a world of real things in outside space 
(p. 115) ; the empathic tendency to humanise and per- 
sonalise our surroundings (p. 198) ; the social tendency 
that makes us imitative and credulous ; the tendency to 
classify everything in pairs ; the tendency to try things 
out, which is always at war with the tendency to let 
things be. These tendencies, and others of the same 



2o6 Instinct and Emotion 

character, represent directive pressures laid upon the or- 
ganism, more strongly upon some individuals and more 
weakly upon others, but in some measure upon all; 
they are realised or expressed on very various occasions, 
and with wide differences of mental accompaniment. 
We have spoken of some of them already; and in- 
stances may be found for the looking. Take the em- 
pathic tendency : what lover of books has not shifted 
the place of certain volumes on a shelf, because he could 
not bear to put good and bad, sound and trivial, side by 
side, — as if the books would feel the incongruity ? 
Take the social tendency : we all tend to pay respect to 
fashion, even the silliest; we all tend to believe what 
we see printed in large headlines ; we are all gullible, if 
only the cheat speaks to us in good English and appeals 
to our habitual standards of living. The tendency to 
classify by pairs shows not only in the dogmatism of 
uneducated persons — an action must be positively right 
or wrong, a man must be positively innocent or guilty — 
but also in the structure of systems of philosophy, in 
the distinctions of active-passive, subject-object, body- 
mind, thing-attribute, appearance-reality, and so on. 
The tendency to try things out is largely responsible 
both for the play of the child and the research of the 
man of science ; read Andrew Lang's story of the first 
radical ! The tendency to let things be, the conserva- 
tive tendency, is on its side largely responsible for the 
laziness of a life of routine. 

Between these extremes lie the instincts that are so 
called in our ordinary speech, and that you would prob- 
ably have thought of, if you had been asked to give 



§ 47- The Two Sides of Instinct 207 

examples of human instincts : such things as fear, love, 
rivalry, jealousy, pugnacity, bashfulness, self-assertion, 
various lines of 'interest.' All these names, and many 
like them, stand for inherited nervous dispositions which 
are realised or expressed in emotion. They too are 
differently combined, and exist in varying degree, in 
different individuals ; and they too are common, in some 
measure, to all humanity. 

Can we now say how man compares, in the matter of 
instinct, with the lower animals ? James commits himself 
so far as to declare that " no other mammal, not even 
the monkey, shows so large an array." The statement 
is probably true, if we mean by instinct, not a fixed and 
unchanging mode of response to the given stimulus or 
situation, but rather an equipment of innate tendencies 
that may form the basis of all sorts of response ; an all- 
round readiness of behaviour, as it were, such that no 
stimulus or situation finds us wholly unprepared, while 
yet the preparation is not so narrow and definite as to 
force us into special and invariable response. Civilised 
man ' reasons ' always on the basis of his instinctive 
tendencies; his 'instincts,' on the other hand, are in 
general less absorbingly possessive and less close-knit 
than those of lower forms of life. 

§47. The Two Sides of Instinct. — If instinct is 
the general name for the innate nervous tendencies to 
behavioui , then the detailed study of instinct belongs to 
physiology and general biology. The psychologist is 
concerned with it only in so far as the innate tendencies 
guide and form the stream of thought. There is, how- 



208 Instinct and Emotion 

ever, another side to instinct, which makes it a matter of 
direct psychological observation ; the touching-off of an 
instinctive response may be accompanied by mental 
processes, by sensations and feeling. We must say 
something of instinct in both relations ; and we look at 
it, first, from the biological point of view. 

The list of instincts given on pp. 205 ff. includes tenden- 
cies of very different kinds, simple and complex, variable 
and constant. Sweeping statements are therefore dan- 
gerous ; we must be careful to guard our generalisations 
by giving instances. That premised, we note, to begin 
with, that the innate tendencies are rarely perfect, com- 
pletely ready for action, at birth ; they ripen as the organ- 
ism developes. The child does not learn to walk, or the 
bird to fly, in any strict sense of the word ' learn ' ; the 
innate tendencies settle to their perfect work as time goes 
on. We note, secondly, that the tendencies may ripen at 
very different levels of individual development; the culmina- 
tion of sex-interest at adolescence, the appearance of 
bashfulness in the child of three or four years, the lack 
of fear in the new-born babe, are cases in point. Thirdly, 
they are extraordinarily persistent. Our instincts, no 
doubt, wax and wane ; but they change far less than their 
outward expression would indicate. The boy, we say, 
goes through the collecting stage, and therewith an end ; 
but do not grown men too collect, if they have time and 
money ? The little girl with her doll is the later mother 
with her child ; and the play of the child persists in the 
technical play of the gambler and the experimental 
essays of the man of science. Fourthly, they are by 
no means harmonious among themselves. In many 



§ 47- The Two Sides of Instinct 209 

animals the instinct to crouch motionless conflicts with 
the instinct to flee from the object of fear, and you may- 
see them obeying now the one and now the other. Curi- 
osity conflicts with alarm : watch a young child on its 
first introduction to a dog or a beetle ! The sparrow is 
at once audacious and cautious, bold and timid; and 
every human adult — despite the song in Iolanthe — 
is both conservative and radical. Fifthly, they are 
looser, have (so to say) a greater freedom of play, than is 
commonly supposed ; and this in two directions ; the 
same response may be touched off by situations that have 
only a general resemblance ; and, conversely, situations 
that seem to be identical may touch off responses that 
show a good deal of difference. In briefer statement, 
like stimuli may call out the same response : we smile 
from happiness or from superiority ; and the same stim- 
ulus repeated may call out responses that are hardly even 
like : the extreme case is, perhaps, our crying or laughing 
for joy. Sixthly, they are liable to be checked, turned 
aside, inhibited, by acquired nervous tendencies; habit is 
not only second nature, but may also overcome nature. 
A chick pecks at an humble-bee, and pays the penalty ; 
thereafter it rejects yolk of egg. A pike in an aquarium, 
separated from minnows by a glass screen, struck re- 
peatedly at its natural prey and bumped its head ; 
when the screen was removed, the minnows were left 
undisturbed. If a sheet of glass is placed before the 
eyes, and a rubber-tipped hammer springs up and hits it, 
you wink, perhaps, for the first hundred times ; but you 
can presently inhibit the wink. This liability to inhibi- 
tion is, of course, more obvious in the case of the more 



210 Instinct and Emotion 

complex tendencies. Seventhly, they are liable to 
specialisation. A bird builds its nest in a certain 
suitable place; and then, though the site may become 
increasingly dangerous and exposed, persists in building 
there again, year after year. The routes that various 
birds follow in their migratory flight south and north 
show the same kind of specialised set. Eighthly and 
lastly, the more complicated tendencies may, especially 
in the case of man, be broken up into partial tendencies; 
and these partial tendencies may then form connections 
of the most varied sort with acquired tendencies. A 
father strikes a blow in defence of his child : love and 
hate and possibly fear are involved ; if the deed is done 
in public, such social instincts as love of approbation 
and fear of ridicule may come in ; all these instincts are 
concerned, and yet the father would give you his reasons 
for the blow ! Civilised man, we said, always ' reasons ' 
on the basis of his instinctive tendencies ; we had better 
have said that he reasons on the basis of various frag- 
ments of instinctive tendency, disjoined from their 
original connections and recombined for an immediate 
purpose. 

So much for the biological side of instinct. We have 
no space for a longer treatment ; though, indeed, if you 
go to the larger works, you will find little more that 
is definite and firmly established ; the detailed study of 
the innate tendencies has hardly begun. If we turn now 
to the mental accompaniments of instinctive response, 
we find ourselves in even worse case; we know practi- 
cally nothing. It is clear that some of the more limited 
responses have a characteristic mental correlate — think of 



§ 47- The Two Sides of Instinct 211 

coughing, sneezing, smiling — which may, however, ac- 
cording to circumstances, be either vivid or so obscure 
as to escape notice. It is clear, again, that the empathic 
tendencies are likely to be characterised by more or less 
massive complexes of organic sensation; and it is perhaps 
true that this organic surge represents the mental aspect 
of the instincts proper, those that pass over into emo- 
tions; for they are responses or reactions of the whole 
organism, and not of some particular organ or member. 
Most of the large directive pressures, that we placed at the 
upper end of the scale, show themselves rather in the volume 
and trend of the mental stream than in the addition of 
new processes, though it is quite possible that they imply 
specific bodily attitudes, and arouse specific patterns of 
kinaesthesis in head or eyes, from breathing or from the 
muscular set of the trunk. We all know how it feels 
to be critically on guard against deception ; but is there 
not, sometimes at any rate, a felt attitude of acceptance, 
of credulity ? could we not, sometimes, after the serious- 
faced jester has played his trick upon us, feel ourselves 
back into our credulous attitude ? We all know, again, 
how disconcerting it is to be faced by a third possibility 
when we have comfortably reduced things to a choice of 
alternatives ; but can we not, now and then, catch our- 
selves in a felt attitude of dividing by two ? Let the 
reader keep an eye on his own experiences ! Lastly, a 
response that is often repeated will illustrate the psy- 
chological law of growth and decay (p. 183) ; the organic 
and kinesthetic sensations will be supplemented by 
images, which will increase up to a certain point, and 
thereafter fall away. Fear of the dark is one instance ; 



212 Instinct and Emotion 

the use and disuse of terms of endearment offer an- 
other. 

As regards feeling, we can only say that all six types of 
sense-f eeling — the agreeable and disagreeable, the ex- 
citing and subduing, the straining and relaxing — may 
appear in connection with instinctive responses, and 
especially with those that we have placed in the middle 
portion of the scale. Such words as fear, pugnacity, 
rivalry, carry the stamp of feeling upon them. 

§ 48. Determining Tendencies. — The reader must 
have felt for some time past that we sorely need a 
technical term for all the directive nerve-forces, brain- 
habits, instinctive tendencies, and so forth, that figure in 
psychological discussion. There is such a term, formed 
on the analogy of ' associative tendencies ' ; psycholo- 
gists are coming more and more to speak of determining 
tendencies. Any nervous set or disposition that turns 
our attention in a certain direction, that casts our per- 
ceptions into a certain form, that places a definite mean- 
ing upon an equivocal word, that governs our response to 
a particular situation, may be called a determining ten- 
dency. Some of these tendencies are simple, and some 
are extremely complex; some are inherited, and some 
are acquired in the life -time of the individual. All alike 
lay down a path of least resistance for the psychoneural 
processes (p. 164) to follow, and thus determine the flow 
of the mental stream. 

Why, then, has not the term been introduced before? 
would not its use have simplified things, have brought 
the different topics together, have saved a good deal 



§ 48. Determining Tendencies 213 

of roundabout phrasing ? No doubt. But there are two 
dangers in the use of such a technical term. The one is 
that you think merely the words themselves, and do not 
carry your thought back to the nervous system. A 
determining tendency is an affair not of mind but of 
body; and if we had used the words from the outset, 
you might easily have slipped into the belief that there 
are determining tendencies in the mind, and might thus 
have left the nervous system out of account. Have you 
not — to be honest ! — thought and spoken of your 
' bodily sensations ' ever since you studied the chapter 
on sensation? Yet there are no physical or bodily 
sensations, any more than there are mental determining 
tendencies ; the bodily processes correlated with sen- 
sation are not the sensation, and the mental flow cor- 
related with a nervous tendency is not that tendency. 
The second danger is that you look upon the technical 
term as self-explanatory; so that, just as popular psy- 
chology explains the conduct of the lower animals by 
' instinct,' without ever asking what instinct is or how 
it explains, you too explain certain mental phenomena 
by ' determining tendency,' forgetting that the work of 
correlation is still all to do. New terms bring these 
risks, that you put the word in place of the facts and con- 
fuse a label with an explanation ; but they are also inev- 
itable, when new observations accumulate ; and this par- 
ticular term should now be as harmless as it is necessary. 
We shall meet the determining tendencies again, when 
we come to deal with action and thought. Meantime 
let us note that they furnish a definition of that rather 
obscure word ' suggestion.' A suggestion is something 



214 Instinct and Emotion 

that comes to us with more or less of the force of a com- 
mand ; but what does this ' force of a command ' 
mean ? Our new technical term helps us : a suggestion 
is any stimulus to nervous activity, external or internal, 
with or without mental accompaniment, that touches of a 
determining tendency. The determining tendency may 
be realised, or may be inhibited, as circumstances decide ; 
the essence of a suggestion is, always and everywhere, 
that it releases such a tendency. Thus, the psychological 
observer of whom we spoke on p. 96 received from the ex- 
perimenter certain instructions ; these instructions were 
obeyed, that is, they were effective suggestions. What, 
now, set up the determining tendency to follow in- 
structions ? A foregone suggestion : the student came 
into the laboratory to observe, to be taught, to put him- 
self under direction. What brought him into the labora- 
tory ? Another foregone suggestion : the wish to learn 
psychology at first hand, the example of his friends. 
What led him to choose at the university the course 
that includes psychology ? What led him to choose this 
particular university? What led him to enter any uni- 
versity? All these results are due to suggestions, which 
grow in number and complexity the farther back we go ; 
and the force of the suggestions, in every case, is their 
appeal to determining tendencies. A nervous system 
that lacked these tendencies would furnish its possessor 
with connections that were all, so to speak, on the same 
plane ; the organism could neither lead nor follow, neither 
choose nor reject, neither work nor play; it would not 
be suggestible. 

From this digression we pass to the study of emotion, 



§ 49- The Nature of Emotion 215 

which, as we have seen, is closely related to the instincts 
of the middle part of our scale. 

§ 49. The Nature of Emotion. — Suppose that you 
are sitting at your desk, busy in your regular way ; 
and suppose that a street-car passes by the house. The 
familiar rumble does not distract you ; it slips in among 
the obscure processes of the margin. Suddenly you 
hear a shrill scream ; and now the noise of the car shoots 
to the focus of attention, becomes the context of the 
scream. You leap up, as if the scream were a personal 
signal that you had been expecting ; you dash out of 
doors, as if your presence on the street were imperatively 
necessary. As you run, you have fragmentary ideas : 
' a child,' perhaps, in internal speech ; a visual flash of 
some previous accident; a momentary kinsesthetic 
set, the stiffening of protest, that represents your whole 
attitude to the city car-system. But you have, also, a 
mass of insistent organic sensation : you choke, you 
draw your breath in gasps, for all the hurry you are in a 
cold sweat, you have a horrible nausea; and yet, in 
spite of the intense discomfort that floods you, you have 
no choice but to go on. In describing the experience 
later, you would say that you were horrified by hearing 
a child scream ; the mental processes that we have just 
named make up the emotion of horror. 

An emotion is thus a temporal experience, a course of 
connected' processes ; it begins, in our illustration, with 
the empathic perception of the scream, and lasts through 
and beyond the events that we have described ; indeed, 
the last traces of the horror may not wear off for days. 



216 Instinct and Emotion 

It is also, characteristically, a suddenly aroused experi- 
ence ; it begins abruptly, though it dies down gradually ; 
the accident comes upon you all at once, and drives 
everything else out of mind. It is highly complex, since 
its stimulus is not a single object, a perceptive stimulus, 
but a total situation or predicament, which may arouse 
all sorts of ideas. It is coloured through and through by 
feeling, since both the situation itself and the organic 
sensations of the emotive response are definitely pleasant 
or unpleasant. It is, at any rate in its more intense 
phases, insistently organic; we took the testimony of 
language on p. 65, and you can easily add to the in- 
stances there cited ; though it must be said also that the 
proportion of organic sensations to ideas varies greatly 
from emotion to emotion and from individual to individ- 
ual. Finally, it is always a predetermined experience, 
issuing from determining tendencies and moving forward, 
in the given case, to a natural end ; though here, too, 
there is great variability, since the determining tenden- 
cies to which the situation makes appeal may be almost 
wholly instinctive, or may (as in the illustration we have 
chosen) be partly instinctive and partly acquired. 

The older books on psychology devote a great deal of 
space to the classification of emotions ; modern psy- 
chology has rather been concerned to bring emotion 
into the laboratory, and to trace the emotive pattern 
under experimental control. It was natural to begin 
with the simpler modes of feeling, and to proceed from 
them to the more complex ; and experiments were there- 
fore made on the sense-feelings. We have seen that the 
results are not yet definitely assured (pp. 83 f.), so that it 



§ 49- The Nature of Emotion 217 

is still too early to write an adequate psychology of the 
emotions. On the whole, however, it seems that the 
three dimensions of sense-feeling will serve for a classifi- 
cation of emotion : joy and fear are agreeable and dis- 
agreeable emotions, anger and grief are exciting and sub- 
duing, hope and relief are straining and relaxing. It is 
not difficult to carry this classification further ; to find, for 
instance, agreeable-exciting, disagreeable-exciting, agree- 
able-subduing, disagreeable-subduing, even agreeable- 
exciting-straining, agreeable-subduing-relaxing forms, 
and so on and so forth; but nothing is gained, at 
present, by drawing such distinctions. We shall there- 
fore leave the classification thus in the rough. One 
point only calls for comment. We said that emotion 
is a suddenly aroused experience, beginning abruptly and 
dying down slowly ; yet the straining and relaxing emo- 
tions — hope, anxiety, disappointment, relief — seem, 
on the contrary, to arise slowly and gradually. It is 
difficult to be sure of the facts ; but we must be careful 
not to confuse the starting of an emotion with what 
occurs after it has started. It may very likely grow in 
strength ; and it will follow, as we have said, a charac- 
teristic course in time, until it reaches its natural end. 
Either of these things — the growth in intensity or the 
development in time — may give the illusion of a gradual 
beginning. If we abstract from them, then it appears 
that these straining-relaxing emotions really come 
suddenly ; they occupy the mind all at once ; we shift 
directly from grief to hope, from satisfaction to anxiety, 
from fear to relief ; the emotions may alternate in our 
experience, but they set in abruptly. We say of a sick 



218 Instinct and Emotion 

friend ' The doctor says that we may begin to hope,' 
or ' The relatives are beginning to be a little anxious ' ; 
but as a matter of psychological fact the hope and the 
anxiety appear to come and go, as mental patterns, quite 
suddenly ; the situation touches off, actualises, now the 
one set of tendencies, and now the other. So our general 
description of emotion may stand. 

§ 50. The James-Lange Theory of Emotion. — We 

saw that emotion, at any rate in its intenser phases, is 
insistently organic ; the organic sensations readily 
blend both with one another and with feeling ; and the 
resultant massive fusion is as characteristic of emotion 
as the organic surge (p. 211) is characteristic of instinct. 
Everyone can distinguish, even in imagination, the rush- 
ing, swelling ' feel ' of anger from the sinking, shrinking 
' feel ' of fear. Psychology has always had an open eye 
for the organic constituent of emotion ; Aristotle and 
many later writers refer to it; and in France emphasis 
upon the organic stir in emotion became almost a matter 
of psychological orthodoxy. The whole subject was, 
however, set in a new light when the late Professor 
James propounded in 1884 his famous c theory of emo- 
tion.' " My thesis is," James wrote, " that the bodily^ 
changes follow, directly the perception of the exciting 
fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they 
occur is the emotion ; " " The more rational statement 
is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we 
strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, 
strike or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, 
as the case may be." The view thus paradoxically 



§ 5°- The James-Lange Theory of Emotion 219 

stated aroused much discussion ; and it gained further 
impetus by the publication in 1885 of an essay on emo- 
tion by Carl Lange, professor of medicine in Copenhagen ; 
Lange independently comes to a conclusion which, in 
principle, is the same as that of James. 

James' position is, evidently, twofold. He affirms, 
in the first place, that emotions have an instinctive basis. 
A situation is presented ; the organism perceives it ; and 
immediately, directly, because the situation appeals to 
instinctive tendencies in the nervous system, the emotive 
response is evoked. With that statement we have no 
quarrel. James also affirms, however, that the ' feel ' 
of what we have called the emotive response is itself the 
experience of emotion; having the organic sensations, 
you have the emotion ; if you had not the organic sensa- 
tions, there would be no emotion. In a later essay he 
modified or amplified his position : he grants the presence 
in emotion of ideas and of pleasant and unpleasant feel- 
ings, but still maintains that the one thing characteristic 
of the emotions is a general seizure of excitement, a churn- 
ing-up of the interior of the organism; and this rank 
excitement is a matter of the organic sensations. 

So there arise two questions of fact : is emotion possible 
ij the organic sensations are lacking? and is the organic 
fusion sufficiently differentiated, in the various emotions, 
to give them their distinctive 'feels ' in experience? 

To answer the first question we have observations both 
upon dogs and upon human beings. Emotive responses 
" occur in dogs in which practically all the main viscera 
and the great bulk of skeletal muscle have been removed 
from subjection to, and from influence upon, the brain 



220 Instinct and Emotion 

by severance of the vagus nerves and the spinal cord. 
In these animals no alteration whatever was noticed in 
the occurrence, under appropriate circumstances, of 
characteristic expressions of voice and features, indicating 
anger, delight or fear." So far, then, the evidence tells 
against the necessity of organic sensations. As regards 
human beings, we cannot, of course, produce a visceral 
anaesthesia at will, by operating upon the living nervous 
system ; we must wait until cases turn up in the hospitals. 
Some such cases have been examined ; and while the 
observations made upon them are not conclusive, still, 
they lend themselves more readily to the same than to the 
opposite interpretation ; if emotion is lacking, the lack 
seems due rather to a general impairment of nervous 
function, including that of the brain, than to the specific 
loss of the organic sensations. The evidence as a whole 
is thus unfavourable to James. 

To answer the second question we may refer to the 
results of experiments recently conducted by Professor 
W. B. Cannon in the physiological laboratory of Harvard 
University. " If various strong emotions can thus be 
expressed in the diffused activities of [a certain division 
of the nervous system] — the division which accelerates 
the heart, inhibits the movements of the stomach and 
intestines, contracts the blood vessels, erects the hairs, 
liberates sugar, and discharges adrenin — it would appear 
that the bodily conditions which have been assumed, 
by some psychologists, to distinguish emotions from one 
another must be sought for elsewhere than in the viscera. 
We do not ' feel sorry because we cry,' as James con- 
tended, but we cry because, when we are sorry or over- 



§ 5°- The James-Lange Theory of Emotion 221 

joyed or violently angry or full of tender affection, — 
when any one of these diverse emotional states is present, 

— there are nervous discharges by sympathetic channels 
to various viscera, including the lachrymal glands. In 
terror and rage and intense elation, for example, the re- 
sponses in the viscera seem too uniform to offer a satis- 
factory means of distinguishing states which, in man at 
least, are very different in subjective quality. . . . 
The viscera are relatively unimportant in an emo- 
tional complex, especially in contributing differential 
features." The technicalities of this quotation do not 
here concern us ; you will understand them if you read 
Dr. Cannon's book ; but it is clear that, again, the evi- 
dence is against James' view. 

We must conclude, then, that the emotive pattern is a 
more complicated affair than the James-Lange theory 
represented it to be. All the component processes — 
perception, ideas, kinaesthesis, organic sensations, feeling 

— play their part in the total experience. We must 
conclude, too, that the pattern varies, at least in the matter 
of emphasis, from one individual to another; that the pro- 
cesses which ' mean ' anger or fear to A may differ from 
those which ' mean ' the same emotion to B; the ideas, 
the kinesthetic set, the organic sensations, may be more 
or less vivid, more or less extended, more or less stable 
features of the mental pattern. In fine, we agree with 
James that all emotions have an instinctive basis ; 
and we agree with him, further, that the organic commo- 
tion, always present in some measure and degree, is 
characteristic of the experience ; but we cannot regard 
this organic commotion either as constitutive, as the one 



222 Instinct and Emotion 

thing necessary to emotion, or as differential, the one thing 
that marks of any particular emotion from all the rest. 
From an aesthetic point of view we may regret this 
conclusion ; it is always more satisfactory to end up a 
discussion with some positive, clean-cut statement than 
to leave the subject with a ' safe ' generalisation and a 
balanced judgement ; but when we are seeking scientific 
truth, we may not outrun the facts we have ; and when a 
science is in the making, the facts will not often round off 
prettily into a comprehensive theory. 

§ 51. The Expression of Emotion. — If the classifica- 
tion of emotions is a pleasant exercise for authors of a 
logical turn, the outward show of emotion in gesture 
and facial expression has always been attractive to those 
who pondered the relations of mind and body. It may 
even be true that observation of these expressive move- 
ments lies at the very root of psychology ; for in emotion 
a man is changed, transformed ; he is unlike himself, 
out of himself, beside himself ; and what could suggest, 
more plainly than such transformation, the activity of 
an indwelling mind? However that may be, there is a 
long list, stretching down the centuries, of works that 
deal with emotive expression. We must ourselves pass 
over everything that appeared before the time of Charles 
Darwin. 

Darwin, who was naturally anxious to bring the facts 
of expression under his formula of evolution, began to 
collect data as early as 1838 ; and with characteristic 
thoroughness he went to all available sources, — to 
animals, to the human infant, to the insane, to works 



§ 5i- The Expression of Emotion 223 

of art, to the play of the facial muscles under the electric 
current, to the different races of mankind. In his book 
of 1872 he distinguishes three main principles of expres- 
sion; the titles will be understood from the examples. 
The first principle is that of serviceable associated habits. 
We all jump when we are startled, and wince when we 
are threatened ; and the jump and wince of man are 
weakened survivals of the frightened animal's leap out 
of danger, and of its cowering self-effacement in presence 
of a stronger enemy. The face of scorn, " curving a con- 
tumelious lip," lays bare the canine teeth, as if for actual 
attack ; the sneer of man is but a weakened survival 
of the snarl by which our stronger-jawed ancestors un- 
fleshed their teeth for the combat. The second principle 
is that of antithesis. If indignation shows itself (accord- 
ing to the first principle) by squared shoulders and out- 
thrown chest, the opposite of this aggressive indignation, 
humiliation or self-abasement, shows itself in the op- 
posed attitude of raised shoulders and indrawn chest, 
Shylock's " patient shrug." The third principle, lastly, 
is that of the direct action of the nervous system. Thus we 
all tremble from fear ; and " trembling is of no service, 
often of much disservice, and cannot have been at first 
acquired through the will, and then rendered habitual 
in association with any emotion " ; it must be directly 
due to the constitution of the nervous system. 

Darwin's principles have been much criticised; in par- 
ticular, the purely negative principle of antithesis has 
received short shrift from later writers. One of the 
things that he fails to account for is the imitative play 
of the lips. The disgusted man looks as if he were about 



224 Instinct and Emotion 

to retch ; the injured man looks bitter ; the disappointed, 
sour; the satisfied, sweet; the mouth, in these latter 
cases, is set as it is when we have a bitter, sour, or sweet 
taste. What is the reason ? We may remind ourselves 
that primitive language was concrete, and not abstract ; 
that it abounded in what we should nowadays call 
metaphor. We may remember also that the one thing 
necessary in a primitive society is food, and that primitive 
metaphors would naturally be, to a large extent, meta- 
phors drawn from the preparing and obtaining of food, 
from cooking and hunting. So we may imagine that the 
successful hunter, returning to camp, licked his lips, 
seemed already to be sucking the sweet morsel; while 
the unsuccessful drew his lips out sideways, as if he were 
trying to taste as little as possible of his sour draught. 
In course of time the metaphor will lapse ; or, more 
strictly, the old concrete way of speech will give place to 
an abstract phrasing, and will hold its own only as 
metaphor, as a bit of picturesque imagery ; we still talk 
to-day of the sweets of love and revenge, of tasting 
success, of tainted money, of a soured disposition, of 
the bitter end. Meanwhile the original gesture, if only 
it is fitted for communication, will persist unchanged ; 
gesture is far more conservative than language ; and the 
look of a bitter taste will thus express the emotion of a man 
who is suffering, perhaps, under an unjust accusation. 
We may say of all such attempts at explanation 
what we said of the biological theory of feeling : it 
would be foolish to reject them outright, and yet they 
are too general, too open to criticism, to satisfy the require- 
ments of science. We need detailed work, both upon 



§ 52. Mood, Passion, Temperament 225 

the physiological and upon the psychological side. Con- 
sider, for example, the erection of the hair in fear and 
rage. This is a result of the diffused activity of the ' sym- 
pathetic ' nervous system, the total effect of which is to 
energise the organism ; when two boys are wrestling, 
the friends of the weaker or less skilful shout to him to 
' get angry ' ; and terrified men achieve wonderful feats 
of leaping and running. But how precisely does the con- 
traction of the muscles beneath the skin subserve this 
energising ? Is it an accident, so to speak, due merely to 
the diffusion of the nervous activity ? or has it a special 
physiological function? and has it, further, anything of 
the biological significance that Darwin attached to it? 
Until such questions are answered in detail, we cannot 
formulate general principles of the expression of emotion. 

§52. Mood, Passion, Temperament. — The weaker 
emotive states, which persist for some time together, 
are called moods; the stronger, which exhaust the or- 
ganism in a comparatively short time, are called passions. 
No sharp line of distinction, however, can be drawn, 
either as regards intensity or as regards duration, be- 
tween these various experiences. 

We have special names for the moods which corre- 
spond with most of the emotions ; thus, cheerfulness is 
the mood of joy, and depression the mood of grief. 
As a rule, the mood appears suddenly, rises slowly to a 
relative maximum, and then slowly dies down. You 
wake in the morning, feeling irritable; you proceed to 
take everything irritably, and so become more irritable 
still; and after a while the incidents that prompt to 

Q 



226 Instinct and Emotion 

irritability seem to grow rarer, and the* mood gradually 
disappears. There are times, however, when some inter- 
current event brings about a quick and total change of 
mood; and there are times when the mood passes off 
abruptly, without assignable reason ; you are surprised to 
find yourself suddenly cheerful. It is a commonplace that 
mood depends, in large measure, upon bodily health ; 
but the correlation has not been worked out. 

Language also has many words for the passions : fury 
is the passion of anger, terror the passion of fear. These 
states imply a severe shock to the nervous system ; and 
though their first effect is to energise the organism, they 
must soon exhaust its reserve powers ; we notice, in 
fact, that very violent emotions are likely to give way 
to lassitude or even to unconsciousness. The name of 
passion is further given, in ordinary speech, to any abid- 
ing interest, natural (p. 207) or acquired, — to any mode 
of emotive response that is specific and lasting. We say 
that a man has a passion for success, for science, for gam- 
bling ; and we mean that a situation which shows any 
sort of reference to these things will appeal to him, 
dominatingly and one-sidedly, through that reference. 

The word ' temperament ' comes to us from popular 
psychology, which classifies mental phenomena under the 
headings of intellect, feeling and will, and places individ- 
ual endowment under the corresponding headings of 
talent, temperament and character. Temperament, 
so far as the term can be employed in a strictly psy- 
chological sense, is thus a very general term for the innate 
susceptibility of the individual to emotive situations and 
for the typical character of his emotive responses. The 



§ 52. Mood, Passion, Temperament 227 

doctrine of temperaments was first systematised by the 
Greek physician Galen in the second century of our era, 
though the germs of the current fourfold classification — ■ 
into choleric, melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic — go 
back much further in the history of thought. This 
classification takes account of the strength .and the dura- 
tion of the emotive response : the choleric person re- 
sponds quickly and strongly, the melancholic slowly and 
strongly, the sanguine quickly and weakly, the phleg- 
matic slowly and weakly, to the situation which evokes 
emotion. Crude to the last degree ! we say : and yet 
it is astonishing to see what a master can do with such 
crudity. Thackeray, in The Newcomes, has drawn 
almost pure types of temperament ; Madame de Florae 
is melancholic, Fred Bayham is choleric, Mrs. Hobson 
Newcome is sanguine, and Rosey is phlegmatic ; and 
the minor characters in a great many of our best novels 
tend in the same way to personify the four temperaments. 
But has not psychology advanced beyond this fourfold 
classification? Not appreciably. There are books, 
written by psychologists, on temperament and character ; 
but the resulting classifications, though more elaborate 
and more ingenious, are also individually coloured ; 
nothing like finality has been reached. A good deal 
might be done, in this field, by the roughest kind of obser- 
vation, provided it were long enough continued. If you kept 
a diary for a couple of years, putting down the nature and 
occasion of your emotions, and the nature and duration 
and occasion and course of your moods, you would be 
gathering material which psychology still lacks, and which 
might serve as starting-point for detailed analytical study. 



228 Instinct and Emotion 

Questions and Exercises 

(i) In the passage which heads this chapter, Descartes 
expresses the opinion that joy, sorrow, love and hate are the 
primary emotions. Do you agree with him? Why? 
How would you set to work to discover the primary emotions ? 

(2) Do you think that there is an instinct of imitation? 
Give reasons for your answer ; then consult the books. 

(3) Write a paragraph, as if for insertion in this chapter, 
on the psychology of surprise. 

(4) Give instances of emotive expression, from your own 
observation, that seem to illustrate Darwin's three principles. 

(5) Define, without looking at the book, instinct, emotion, 
determining tendency, suggestion. 

(6) The figure below shows the facial expression of two 
opposite emotions, as suggested by the natural philosopher 

and artist Leonardo 
da Vinci (1452-1519; 
see A Treatise on 
Painting, 1877, 65). 
What are the emo- 
tions ? Can you offer 
any explanation of their expressions? 

(7) Suppose that an actor is to play an emotional part on 
the stage. Will he do better if he himself feels the part, or if 
he remains cold and merely simulates the expression of 
emotion? 

(8) Can you give instances, from your own experience, of 
the modification or suppression of movements which natu- 
rally express emotion? Does this inhibition of movement 
affect the emotion itself ? Do not generalise hastily ; gather 
a number of cases. 

(9) Recall some specific emotion that you have experienced. 
What processes are imaginal or ' reproduced,' and what are 
set up anew or 'produced,' in the recall? Write fully and 
carefully. 





References 229 

(10) You have already been asked to discuss the possi- 
bility of ' mixed feelings ' (p. 88). Are there ' mixed ' or 
' mingled emotions ' ? If so, in what sense ? 

(n) It is said in the text that no sharp line of division 
can be drawn between emotion, passion and mood. Illus- 
trate this statement from your own experience. 

(12) Give instances, from poetry or fiction, of the delinea- 
tion of practically pure temperaments. 

References 

A. Bain, The Emotions and the Will, [1859] 1880; C. 
Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 
1872 ; W. James, Principles of Psychology, ii., 1890, chs. 
xxiv., xxv. ; T. Ribot, The Psychology of the Emotions, 
1897 ; J. Sully, An Essay on Laughter, 1902 ; W. Wundt, 
Outlines of Psychology, 1907, § 13 ; W. McDougall, An In- 
troduction to Social Psychology, 1908; E. B. Titchener, 
Text-book of Psychology, 1910, 462 ff., 471 ff. ; H. Bergson, 
Laughter, 191 1; E. L. Thorndike, The Original Nature of 
Man, 1913 ; W. B. Cannon, Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, 
Fear and Rage, 1915. 



CHAPTER IX 

Action 

The ordinary way of speaking is, that the Understanding and Will are 
two faculties of the mind; yet I suspect that this way of speaking of 
faculties has misled many into a confused notion of so many distinct 
agents in us, which had their several provinces and authorities, and did 
command, obey, and perform several actions, as so many distinct beings : 
which has been no small occasion of wrangling, obscurity and uncer- 
tainty in questions relating to them. — John Locke 

§ 53. The Psychology of Action. — There seems to be a 
great gulf fixed between plants and animals, and you 
were probably surprised to read, on p. 13, that there are 
not a few psychologists who take the question of a 
plant-mind with scientific seriousness. If you ask your- 
self, now, wherein this gulf consists, you will find that it 
reduces in the main to a single point of difference : 
the higher plants are stationary organisms, the higher 
animals are motor. The plant stands still and has to wait 
for things to come to it; and its organisation fits the 
case; it spreads its organs over the widest possible 
space, and is all, so to say, on the outside. The animal 
moves ; it goes to things ; and its organisation is corre- 
spondingly different ; the vital organs are packed away 
inside, where they are out of harm's reach, and are 
distributed in such a way as to be easily carried. It 
would be strange, then, if movement — the great dif- 
ferential character of the animals — did not somehow 

230 



§ 53- The Psychology of Action 231 

fall within the range of psychology ; and we know that it 
does; for we are continually hoping, fearing, resolving, 
refusing, wishing to do something, or feeling glad, sorry, 
satisfied, disappointed, resentful that the something 
has been done. Moreover, we have already made 
frequent reference to movement ; we have spoken of 
the attitude of attention, of movement of the eyes, 
of instinctive and expressive movements ; and we have 
also laid stress upon the manifold part played in the 
mental life by kinaesthesis, by sensations from the mov- 
ing organs. So we are prepared to consider movement 
in its own psychological right, as correlated with special 
mental processes or patterns. 

There are, as usual, a few preliminary matters to be 
got out of the way. First of all, we shall do well to dis- 
tinguish the terms ' movement ' and ' action.' Move- 
ment is, without question, the wider term. Action, al- 
though it is very loosely used in ordinary speech, so that 
we speak of the action of a horse or a sewing-machine, 
is the word that we naturally employ in referring to 
human conduct. We may therefore take advantage of 
this difference in meaning, and may say that action, as 
a technical term in psychology, denotes any organic 
movement that has mental correlates; or more strictly, 
that it is an organic movement any phase of which, 
beginning, middle or end, has mental correlates. The 
need of the stricter definition will appear as we go on. 

Secondly, we must be clear as regards the problem 
which action, as thus defined, presents to psychology. 
We have, of course, to describe and to correlate; to 
describe the mental processes that occur with movement, 



232 Action 

or with one or more of its phases ; and to indicate, as 
well as our knowledge permits, the corresponding pro- 
cesses in the nervous system. We have made out 
three modes of correlation : separate mental processes 
correspond with certain brain-processes ; the pattern of 
mental connection corresponds with the play of asso- 
ciative tendencies in the brain ; and the course of the 
mental stream corresponds with the activity of determin- 
ing tendencies. These, then, are the limits within which 
we work ; and we shall be obliged to leave the subject 
very much in the rough ; for psychological description 
is still imperfect, and our knowledge of the nervous 
mechanisms is woefully incomplete. Be clear, neverthe- 
less, that the psychological problem lies within these limits. 
The psychologist has nothing to do with the relative 
values of ' motives.' He cannot teach you how to ac- 
quire ' control ' of your actions. His task is simply to 
set forth the facts ; and if the facts that he discovers are 
of value for morals or education, as indeed they can 
hardly fail to be, so much the better; only, you must 
not confuse scientific information with practical advice, 
and be disappointed at the one because you do not re- 
ceive the other. All this has been said before; but the 
present is a good time for repeating it. 

Lastly, you should realise that in an organism so compli- 
cated as man, and of such varied and eventful history, 
movement by itself is no index to mental process. There 
are, no doubt, outward and visible signs of hesitation, of 
deliberation, of quick resolve ; but the bare movement 
is not a cue to mind. Psychological enquiry must 
always go behind the movement; that is, we must 



§ 54- The Typical Action 233 

either know the previous mental history of the individual 
who makes the movement, or we must ourselves arrange 
the circumstances under which the movement is to be 
made. Suppose, for instance, that you have to sign 
your name to a deed. You may have spent weeks in 
reflection, in balancing pros and cons, in painful in- 
decision ; your action is then a ' voluntary action ' 
of the most positive sort ; and yet, when the moment 
comes, your signature flows smoothly from the pen, as 
if the matter had never cost you a moment's worry. 
Now suppose that you are sitting in a committee-meet- 
ing, listening to a tedious report; you take the blank 
paper before you, and write your accustomed signature, 
without either the intention to write or knowledge that 
you are writing. The two movements may be indistin- 
guishable, and yet this second writing is an ■ automatic ' 
or ' involuntary ' action. So a hand-shake may mean 
the barest recognition of a casual acquaintance, or the 
friendly settlement of a long-standing disagreement ; the 
onlooker can see no difference in the movements, though 
their mental accompaniments are worlds apart. There 
is, indeed, no chapter in psychology that illustrates the 
law of mental growth and decay (p. 183) so fully and so 
surprisingly as this chapter on action. Movements 
that once were rich in mental correlates fall into the direst 
psychological poverty; and movements that now are 
poor may acquire a mental fortune, which they in their 
turn are bound presently to lose. 

§ 54. The Typical Action. — Under these circum- 
stances, it sounds a little incongruous to talk of a ' typi- 



234 Action 

cal ' action. But we must start somewhere ; and we 
may, perhaps, say that the typical action, for psychology, 
is an action of the simplest form taken at its psychological 
best; in other words, an organic movement that is 
singly determined and that shows a maximum of mental 
accompaniment. You will understand better what this 
definition means when we have worked out an illustra- 
tion. Meantime, you can see that such an action — we 
call it an impulsive action — serves as point of departure 
in two directions. The form may remain simple, while 
the mental side suffers reduction ; or the form may be- 
come complicated, and therewith new mental characters 
may be introduced. In the former case, the impulsive 
action runs downhill toward automatic; in the latter, 
it climbs up toward deliberative action. 

Now for the illustration ! Suppose that, as I am writ- 
ing this paragraph, it occurs to me to look up a reference, 
for quotation, in a particular book that stands on the 
shelf by my side. I turn toward the shelf, recognise the 
book, take it in my hand and turn the pages, and pres- 
ently find the passage I had in mind to use. I have 
performed an impulsive action, in the sense of our defi- 
nition; the illustration is complete. I shall go on to 
put a marker in the book, or to copy out the sentence, 
and ultimately I shall return the book to the shelf ; 
but these later developments do not here concern us. 

Let us try to analyse this action ; and since the mental 
accompaniment is fairly complex, let us analyse, at first, 
only in large and gross terms. We begin with a pre- 
paratory phase, in which there are two things to notice : 
the intention to move (it occurs to me to look up the 



§ 54- The Typical Action 235 

reference) and the idea of the result of movement (finding 
the required passage for quotation). Then follows a 
middle phase, in which the outstanding thing is the 
perception of the object of movement (I see and identify 
the book on the shelf). The final phase includes a 
perception of movement itself in kin aesthetic terms (I 
reach out, take the book down, turn the pages) and also 
the perception of the result of movement (I find the 
sentence). So we have three roughly distinguishable 
phases, each one issuing from that which preceded it, 
which we may formulate as follows : 

Intention of movement 1 — » Perception f Perception of movement 
Idea of result J of object — > I Perception of result. 

You understand that the arrows indicate a definite 
direction ; the second and third phases issue from the 
first ; the whole course is predetermined. When I perceive 
the book, under this impulsive determination, the asso- 
ciative tendencies have no freedom of play ; I cannot 
think that the back is breaking, or that I know the writer, 
or that the chalky paper is detestable, though all of these 
are things that might occur to me at another time ; I 
can only recognise the book as the book that will realise 
my idea of result, that contains the passage I need. 
The whole course, again, is singly, unequivocally, pre- 
determined ; it occurs to me to use the quotation, and I 
do not reflect or hesitate ; I act directly and forthright 
upon the suggestion; there is no conflict. In a word, 
the example shows us action in its simplest form and with 
a maximum of mental concomitant; and that is what 
we agreed to regard, from the psychological point of 
view, as a typical action. 



236 Action 

Analysis of this crude kind does no more than give us 
our bearings. If we are to lay out the facts with scien- 
tific accuracy, we must Carry actions into the laboratory, 
and examine them under experimental conditions. 
We do this by way of the ' reaction experiment.' 

§ 55. The Reaction Experiment. — The reaction ex- 
periment comes to us, of all unlikely things, by the road 
of astronomy. In the old days, before electrical instru- 
ments were invented, astronomers used to time the pas- 
sage of a star across the meridian of their observatory 
by means of the eye-and-ear method. You can easily 
imagine the procedure. You have your eye at the 
ocular of a telescope, the field of which is evenly divided 
by a number of fine vertical lines. The star enters the 
field from the right, and crosses to the left; your task 
is to determine the instant at which it traverses the mid- 
most vertical line, which corresponds with the meridian. 
A clock is behind you, beating seconds ; and you 
count these seconds, one, two, three, from a given 
starting-point. If the star passes the meridian exactly 
on a beat, well and good ; you know the time of its pas- 
sage; if, as ordinarily happens, it passes somewhere 
between two beats, then you must estimate the time of 
passage to the nearest tenth of a second. That is the 
principle of the eye-and-ear method ; you watch and 
listen, and so make your observation. 

In the year 1 796, the astronomer in charge of the Green- 
wich Observatory found himself obliged to dismiss an 
otherwise competent assistant, who in the previous year 
had fallen into the habit of recording his transits some 



§ 55- The Reaction Experiment 237 

half-second too late, and had now increased his error 
to almost a whole second. This unfortunate man was 
the originator of what came to be known as the personal 
difference. For it was found that no two astronomers 
exactly agreed in their recording of times ; every ob- 
server differed from every other by a certain average 
amount. So it became customary to take some highly 
skilled observer as standard, and to refer other observers 
to him ; and that is the origin of the personal equation ; 
the formula A —B=o.S sec. means, for instance, that the 
observer A records a transit, on the average, four-fifths 
of a second later than the more skilled observer B. 
What j5's error may have been nobody knows. 

We cannot trace the history of the personal difference 
in detail. It is enough to say that the astronomers, hav- 
ing discovered it, were naturally anxious to get rid of it ; 
and they presently found a way to relieve the observer of 
the task of listening ; he simply pressed a key when the 
star crossed the line of the meridian, and the time of 
pressing was recorded automatically. This device did 
not eliminate the personal difference ; but it was methodi- 
cally of great importance. For the eye-and-ear method 
had now become, essentially, a method of response to 
stimulus by movement; and in that form it settled down 
permanently in the psychological laboratory. The 
stimulus for the astronomer was the star on the meridian, 
and the response was the pressure of his finger on a 
key. But it is clear that the stimulus need not be visual ; 
the observer might just as well respond to a sound or a 
touch or a taste. It is clear, further, that the response 
need not be a movement of the hand; the observer 



238 Action 

may respond, just as well, by movement of the organs 
of speech, or of the foot, or of lip or eyelid. It is clear, 
finally, that if we know the actual time at which the 
stimulus is presented, and the actual time at which the 
movement of response takes place, we can measure 
the interval between the two. A little ingenuity makes 
this possible. If, for instance, the flash of light which 
serves as stimulus makes an electrical circuit, and the 
finger-movement in response breaks the circuit ; and if 
an electrical clock is placed in the same circuit ; then the 
clock-hands will begin to move when the flash comes, 
and will stop when the movement occurs, and we can 
read off the reaction time from the dial. 

In its simplest form, then, the reaction experiment 
takes shape as follows. We subject the observer to some 
prearranged form of stimulation (a flash of light, a sharp 
noise) , to which he is to reply by some prearranged move- 
ment (perhaps, the slipping of his finger from the button 
of a telegraph key) ; and the instruments which we 
employ are so connected that we can measure the time 
elapsing between the exhibition of stimulus and the per- 
formance of answering movement. The experiment thus 
has two sides. It gives us numerical results, the reaction 
times measured in units of our clock, in hundredths or 
thousandths of a second ; but it gives us also a complete 
impulsive action, which we can observe as often as is 
necessary for analysis. 

For consider the course of the reaction experiment 
in the light of our typical formula of action! The 
observer sits down with the intention of moving when he 
has perceived the stimulus ; and he has an idea of the 



§ 56. Sensory and Motor Reaction 239 

result of his movement, namely, the performance of a 
reaction experiment. The stimulus is presented ; he 
perceives the object of movement; and slips his finger 
from the key. He thus perceives the movement itself, 
and also, by the movement, realises in perception his 
idea of result. He has performed a complete impulsive 
action, but an action which, on the mental side, has 
been thinned out to a manageable degree of simplicity. 
The mental accompaniment is there ; but the intention 
to move bears upon a single finger, the idea of result is 
just the idea of completing the experiment, the percep- 
tion of object is the perception of a simple stimulus, the 
movement itself is a slight local displacement of a single 
member ; nothing is left out, although the action is 
reduced to a skeleton. It has thus been made manage- 
able; the mental accompaniments of the movement 
are not so complex that they baffle observation ; and 
the technique of the experiment is an outline which 
can be filled in and further complicated in all manner of 
ways. We may hope that that Greenwich assistant 
found further employment ; but we can hardly, as psy- 
chologists, regret that he timed his transits later than 
he should ! 

§ 56. Sensory and Motor Reaction. — Suppose that 
you are performing the simple reaction experiment, and 
that you tell your observers beforehand to react as soon 
as they perceive the stimulus. You soon find that this 
instruction is differently interpreted. One observer 
will prepare to react as soon as he perceives the stimulus; 
and another, to react as soon as he perceives the stimulus. 



240 Action 

The difference of emphasis may be brought out by a 
homely illustration. When the lights are turned on in 
the evening, it is not uncommon, even in the best regu- 
lated families, for a clothes-moth to start up from some 
corner. You say ' There's a moth ! ' and clap your hands 
to kill it. But it escapes ; and henceforth you do not 
trouble to identify it ; you clap your hands at anything 
mothlike that flits across the field of vision; you are 
set or disposed for the movement. So in the two forms 
of the simple reaction : some observers tend naturally 
to make sure of the stimulus, before they move, and 
others tend naturally to move, as soon as any stimulus 
has appeared. 

We cannot rely, however, upon the natural tendency 
of the observer, because his attitude is likely to change 
as the experiment proceeds, and a change of attitude 
means a disturbance of the experimental conditions. 
Moreover, there are observers of intermediate tendency, 
who accent both the ' perception of stimulus ' and the 
' reaction as soon as,' and may accent them in different 
degree. Hence it is necessary to instruct the observers 
at the outset that they are to perform either a sensory 
or a motor reaction, that is, that they are to look for- 
ward either to the perception of the stimulus or to the 
execution of the movement. With this preliminary 
instruction, the sensory reaction takes, on the average 
and for practised reactors, a tenth of a second longer 
than the motor, whether the stimulus be a sight, a 
sound, or a touch. The longer time points, of course, 
to a more complicated nervous path ; and that in turn 
raises the presumption of a richer mental accompani- 



§ 56. Sensory and Motor Reaction 241 

merit. Observations show, in fact, that only the sensory 
reaction represents a complete impulsive action; the motor 
reaction does not fall under our formula. 

The main difference — and we have no space for 
detailed analysis — is this. The instruction for the 
motor reaction sets up kinesthetic sensations of strain 
in the reacting member, principally in the finger; 
these are contextual processes (p. 118), which carry the 
meaning ' You are to react as quickly as possible ' ; 
and they are accordingly known as ' sensations of in- 
tended movement.' They imply that the instruction 
is already in part fulfilled ; the muscles are, from the 
very first, prepared for the movement that shall end the 
experiment. Indeed, an observer who is thus instructed 
will sometimes react prematurely, before the stimulus 
has appeared, and is also liable to accept as the stimulus 
any chance stimulus that intervenes, and so to react 
wrongly. The instruction for the sensory reaction, on 
the other hand, sets up an expectation of the stimulus ; 
the organism is thus prepared especially for perception ; 
premature and wrong reactions do not occur. The 
intention to move is present, to be sure, but it is in the 
background, carried only by the feel of the finger as it 
lies upon the key, or in more diffuse form by the feel of 
the extended arm upon the table. We might therefore 
say that, in the motor reaction, the formula tends to 
close up on itself, like a telescope ; idea of result is 
always approaching perception of result, and intention 
of movement is always approaching perception of move- 
ment ; the perception of object gets squeezed between 
the two extremes, as these draw together ; whereas, in 



242 Action 

the sensory reaction, the formula is followed in extenso; 
the mental processes are thinned out, as we have put it, 
but they are all present, following one another in their 
regular order. The reaction experiment thus renders 
the impulsive action manageable, puts it at our disposal 
for scientific analysis, but also shows that an action, 
even in its simplest form, will vary with every shift of 
emphasis in the suggestion (p. 213) which calls it forth. 
Let us look, now, at the reaction times, and see if 
they can be turned to scientific account. So many 
experiments have been made that we know the aver- 
age times of reaction, both sensory and motor, to light, 
sound and touch ; and we also know what their aver- 
age constancy or regularity will be, if the reactor keeps 
his attitude to the experiments unchanged. The times 
themselves, and the numerical statement of their con- 
stancy, may therefore be used as indexes to the type of 
reaction, sensory or motor, and to the stability or insta- 
bility of the reactor's attitude. They embody, as if 
in shorthand, the results of oft-repeated observation, and 
they may henceforth take the place of direct psychologi- 
cal observation when we are asked to decide on the type 
of reaction or the reliability of the reactor. The psy- 
chological observation must, however, come first; we 
cannot take the reaction- times of children or South Sea 
Islanders, and at once put them down as sensory or motor 
or mixed ; we must know what the reactors were trying 
to do, how they understood the instructions given them. 

§ 57. The Degeneration of Action: From Impulsive 

to Reflex. — We have now to trace the course of im- 



§ 57- The Degeneration of Action 243 

pulsive action, downward to automatic, and upward 
to deliberative action. If we start out on the down- 
ward path, we note that impulsive action by frequent 
repetition degenerates, first, to what is called sensori- 
motor or ideomotor action : sensorimotor, if the object 
is still perceived, as it is in the impulsive action proper 
(p. 235), and ideomotor, if the perception is replaced by 
an idea of object. Here the predetermination is a ner- 
vous set without any mental correlates ; the intention 
to move has dropped away; and the idea of result is, 
so to say, incorporated in the perception or idea of 
object; so that movement follows at once upon this 
perception or idea. When we sit down at table, for 
instance, we take up our knife as a thing to cut food 
with; and when we are dressing, we close our fingers 
round a button as a thing to fasten a garment with ; the 
movements that we make are predetermined, but not 
premeditated; the actions are sensorimotor. When, 
again, it occurs to us, in the midst of our reading, that 
the mail must have arrived, we ideate the packet of 
letters as something to be fetched from the mail-box; 
and when, as we watch the shower, it occurs to us that 
the cellar hatchway is open, we ideate the hatchway as 
something to be closed ; we act without further thought, 
and the actions are ideomotor. 

But the degeneration may go further still. " There 
is a story," writes Huxley, " which is credible enough, 
though it may not be true, of a practical joker, who, 
seeing a discharged veteran carrying home his dinner, 
suddenly called out ' Attention! ' whereupon the man 
instantly brought his hands down, and lost his mutton 



244 Action 

and potatoes in the gutter." Huxley calls this an arti- 
ficial reflex action; and indeed the organism responds, 
in such cases of thorough drill, as fatally and automati- 
cally as in the physiological reflexes, and with as little 
apprehension of the nature of the stimulus; there is 
nothing to choose, psychologically, between this direct 
response to the word ' Attention ! ' and the blinking of 
the eye in response to a threatened blow, or the snatching 
back of the hand from a hot surface, or the withdrawal 
of the foot when the sole is tickled. From the psycho- 
logical point of view, impulsive action, instinctive action 
and artificial reflex all shade off into one another ; and 
the artificial and physiological reflexes are indistinguish- 
able. 

Only, as we know, the artificial reflex has a mental 
history; the word ' Attention ! ' had been called out 
many thousand times before it became a compelling 
suggestion. What, then, of the physiological reflex? 
Has it, too, a mental history, extending beyond the 
individual to the race ; is it a racially degenerate impul- 
sive action? or does it belong to a class apart, purely 
physiological in character, and without right to men- 
tion in a text-book of psychology? 

The answer to these questions must be speculative; 
and speculation, as is almost always the case, has swung 
between opposed extremes. Some psychologists teach 
that all action has its origin in the physiological reflex ; 
the organism at first moved reflexly, automatically, 
fatally ; and then, later, mental processes were somehow 
- imported ' into its activities. Others hold that all 
organic movements were originally of the impulsive 



§ 57- The Degeneration of Action 245 

sort ; the physiological reflex, so far from being primary, 
is a late development, the final term in a series which 
begins with movement of a large, diffuse sort, accom- 
panied by mental processes, and which ends with pre- 
cise, local movement devoid of mental correlates. Both 
these views are open to objection from the biological 
side ; and it seems reasonable to suppose that the earliest 
movements of the earliest organisms were of two kinds: 
some were bare reflexes, or — to use the newer word — 
physiological ' tropisms ' ; others, however scanty and 
undifferentiated their mental accompaniment, were 
still of the nature of impulsive actions. If this mediat- 
ing view be adopted, as a working hypothesis, the zoolo- 
gist and the comparative psychologist must join forces, 
to trace the racial history of the physiological reflexes, 
and to determine what part of our human equipment is 
ultimately tropistic, and what part may be referred 
back to earlier impulses. 

The passage from an impulsive action to an artificial 
reflex may be regarded, broadly, as an example of the effect 
of practice. We have seen that improvement in such 
activity as piano-playing depends, not solely upon 
repetition, but largely also upon changes in our method 
of working; upon the sudden discovery of some new 
trick of procedure, or the sudden release from some 
hampering peculiarity of method (p. 170). Turning- 
points of this same sort are characteristic of the path 
from impulse to reflex ; we do not find a gradual refining 
of movement and a corresponding simplification of its 
mental accompaniments ; the history is rather a matter 
of short-cuts and substitutions ; the organic machine is 



246 Action 

too complicated, too sensitive, has too great a variety 
of resources, to follow a beaten track. So the course 
of impulsive action, though it be downhill, cannot be 
expected to run smooth. 

§ 58. The Development of Action : From Impulsive 
to Selective and Volitional. — Action appears in its 
simplest form when it is singly or unequivocally deter- 
mined (p. 235); and this implies that actions of more 
complicated form are multiply or equivocally deter- 
mined. What that means you will see at once if you 
recall the development of attention. Primary passes 
into secondary attention because we have many sense- 
organs, all of them open to manifold stimulation at the 
same time, and because we have many different lines 
of interest, several of which may be appealed to by the 
situation in which we chance to find ourselves; there 
are rival claimants for the centre of the field of atten- 
tion. Impulsive passes into selective action, in precisely 
the same way, when the nervous system is the seat of a 
conflict of impulsive tendencies. 

The passage, however, is not made at one step ; the 
conflict of impulses may remain a mere conflict of im- 
pulses, without rising to the pitch of selective action. 
We have already had an instance : the young child, 
face to face with a strange dog, behaves as if pulled back 
and forth by strings ; it goes toward the dog, runs back 
to its father, approaches the dog again, shrinks back 
again, and so on. It has happened to the author, in 
presence of the two impulses to shut a door on the right 
and to seat himself at a desk on the left, to begin the 



§ 58. The Development of Action 247 

right-hand movement towards the door, and then all at 
once to slue around to the desk without having closed 
it. In such cases, the organism acts impulsively or 
instinctively, but acts nevertheless under a dual deter- 
mination ; the instincts or impulses . are in conflict. 
Buridan's ass, starving to death between its two bundles 
of hay, illustrates the logical outcome of an exact equal- 
ity of the conflicting tendencies. 

One may observe this sort of action, typically shown, 
in the behaviour of those who are asked to guess a riddle 
or solve a mechanical puzzle. Some people, of course, 
set to work deliberately, and think the matter out in 
all its bearings ; they are not here in question. A great 
many will behave in the manner just described; they 
will hazard guess after guess in quick succession, and they 
will snatch at one possibility of solution after another, 
risking everything upon the impulse that happens to 
be dominant at the moment, until they either light upon 
the right principle or ' give up.' Professor Lloyd Mor- 
gan, one of the best-known writers upon comparative 
psychology, thinks that this method of ' trial and error ' 
is characteristic of animal intelligence. The dog, for 
instance, placed in novel circumstances, meets the situa- 
tion at once by some action that derives from his indi- 
vidual experience or from racial inheritance ; if that first 
response fails, he ' tries ' another action, similarly de- 
rived ; and so on, until luck favours him or he is diverted 
to something else. Only man advances beyond the 
stage of ' trial and error ' to the level of rational selec- 
tion; and man himself need not; in the story of Dite 
Deuchars Sir J. M. Barrie draws an accurate picture of 



248 Action 

human conduct permanently arrested between impulsive 
and selective action. 

Selective action appears when the rival impulses are 
so evenly matched that no one of them can find direct issue 
in movement; it implies the state of secondary attention; 
and it is possible only to organisms that possess free 
ideas of memory and imagination, — probably, that is, 
only to man. Any biography that goes at all minutely 
into details will furnish examples. Thus, when the first 
Napoleon was at liberty to turn his thoughts to Eng- 
land, after the treaty of Schonbrunn (1809), he found 
two possibilities of action : he might himself take in 
hand the conduct of the war in Spain, or he might devote 
himself to heightening the rigour of the blockade in 
the north and north-west. He ' chose ' the latter 
course; that is to say, he passed through a period of 
doubt and hesitation, weighing the alternatives and 
estimating results, — we know the pattern of secondary 
attention, — until presently the stronger impulse won. 
It is always the strongest impulse that wins; though here, 
as also in the case of attention, it is not necessarily the 
impulse that looks the strongest to psychological ob- 
servation ; there may be a more impressive array of 
ideas on the side that finally gives way. The winning 
impulse, as we see in historical examples of selective 
action, is that which has the strongest backing of nerve- 
forces (p. 96). The actor, oftentimes, cannot make 
his action plausible, even to himself, when he tries to 
state his ' reasons ' ; but the sympathetic historian can 
trace the influence of tendencies which had no mental 
correlates, and whose existence was therefore unsuspected 
by their possessor. 



§ 58. The Development of Action 249 

All this is clear in principle, though psychology stands 
sorely in need of detailed analyses. Let us add a final 
word of caution, — that you beware of confusing the 
practical or moral value of selective action with its 
psychological status. Napoleon the Great was an in- 
comparably more efficient person than Dite Deuchars, 
and the results of his action were incomparably wider ; 
but with a trifle more balance in the impulsive tendencies, 
and a little freer play of ideas, the latter gentleman 
could have performed selective actions of the same 
psychological type as Napoleon's. 

There is, however, another kind of action — we may 
call it volitional action — ■ in which an impulse seems to 
come into conflict, not with another impulse, but with 
some idea or group of ideas that has no motor reference. 
I hear my alarum-clock, and have the impulse to get 
up ; but that impulse is definitely opposed by the idea 
of another half-hour's sleep. How can an idea oppose 
an impulse? When Caesar crossed the Rubicon his 
alternative was not another course of action, but the pas- 
sive resignation of the two Gauls and the disbanding of 
his army ; the choice lay between acting and refraining 
from action. How can activity and passivity thus come 
into conflict? 

The answer to these questions is given with what we 
said about the nervous correlates of attention (p. 109). 
We learned, you remember, that nervous reinforcement 
and nervous inhibition go hand in hand : neither acts 
without the other ; but we were not able at that time 
to present the evidence for this belief. The evidence 
is twofold. We find, in experiments upon abstraction, 



250 Action 

that reinforcement always implies inhibition. Suppose, 
for instance, that the observer is shown a series of col- 
oured figures, each one for a fraction of a second only, 
and that he is asked to report accurately upon the form 
of these visual stimuli. He can do so : but if he is then 
asked to report further about the colour, he can say 
little if anything in reply. Reinforcement of the form 
has brought with it inhibition of the colour. We find, 
again, in experiments with what is called negative in- 
struction that inhibition always implies reinforcement. 
Suppose that a picture is shown, and that the observer 
is told to utter the first word that occurs to him when 
he sees it, only that the word uttered is not to be the 
name of the object pictured. He can do this, too ; but 
the results prove that the ' negative ' always brings in a 
' positive ' ; either the throat is held stiff, locked up 
for the time against any utterance whatever, or the 
instruction ' Don't name the object ' is translated by 
the observer into ' Name a property of the object ' or 
' Name a use to which the object might be put ' ; inhi- 
bition of the name has meant reinforcement of throat- 
kinaesthesis or of some positively suggestive idea. 

Apply this evidence, now, to the case in point ! The 
sound of the alarum-clock is, on the face of it, a positive 
suggestion, bidding me get up ; but every suggestion is 
really two-faced ; if it sets off certain of the tendencies 
natural to the situation, it also checks others. The 
sound of the bell, therefore, not only reinforces the get- 
ting-up tendencies, but also represses the nervous dis- 
position that tends to keep me lying still. In the same 
way, the idea of further sleep means not only the rein- 



§ 58. The Development of Action 251 

forcement of this disposition to lie still, but also, on the 
negative side, a blocking of the suggestion from the 
alarum-clock. The situation offers the alternatives 
' action ' and ' no action ' ; but the nerve-forces which 
the situation calls into play, and which correspond with 
these alternatives, both alike bear upon ' action,' as 
both alike bear upon ' no action.' The conflict is thus, 
after all, of the same kind as in selective action. Idea does 
not oppose impulse, nor does activity oppose passivity ; 
but nerve-forces which make for action and against rest 
oppose nerve-forces which make for rest and against 
action ; the double-faced nature of the nervous mechan- 
ism is the key to the riddle. The particular ' action ' 
and the particular mode of ' no action ' are, naturally, 
determined by the situation itself. 

If these selective and volitional actions are often repeated, 
choice is likely to give way to habit; some one impulse 
gains predominance over the rest ; and then, as if to pay 
the price of victory, speedily falls to the sensorimotor or 
ideomotor form, and finally lapses into an artificial 
reflex. When we are learning to play a musical instru- 
ment, our actions are one and all selective ; we have to 
think which dot upon the staff stands for which note 
upon the keys, and which finger is to be set down where. 
When we have become adepts, the bare sight of the 
printed score touches off the appropriate movements; 
we play ' instinctively ' in the right key, in the right 
tempo, with the right emphasis; we may even carry 
on a conversation, and still play correctly, though we 
have never seen the score before. The practised speaker 
does not ' choose ' his words ; his ideas express them- 



252 Action 

selves for him ; he may even run ahead in thought, while 
his larynx is still busy with the present topic. The 
road to automatism is that with which we are already 
familiar (p. 245), though the psychological history of 
the automatic actions is different. 

§ 59. The Compound Reaction. — The detailed analy- 
ses that we felt the need of on p. 249 ought, by rights, 
to be provided by the reaction experiment; for that, 
as we said on p. 239, furnishes an outline-plan of experi- 
mental work which can be filled in and complicated in 
all manner of ways. Why, then, should not selective 
and volitional action be as manageable as impulsive? 
and why should we not follow, experimentally, the rise 
of impulse to choice and its later return to impulse? 

There are two main reasons, the one internal and the 
other external, why the reaction experiment has not devel- 
oped along the lines of our psychological classification of 
action. The internal reason is that the reactor is ex- 
tremely sensitive to slight changes in instruction, in the 
rules laid down for the experiment. We have already 
had an instance : the sensory reaction is a skeleton im- 
pulsive action; but the motor reaction, which results 
from a shift of emphasis in the instruction, is not sensori- 
motor; it is an abbreviated or telescoped impulsive 
action. Psychologists have naturally been interested 
in this side of the experiment, and so have tried the effect 
of varying instructions, instead of duplicating in the 
laboratory the gross types of action that our classifi- 
cation distinguishes. The second, external reason is 
that the reaction, largely on account of its outside origin, 



§ 59- The Compound Reaction 253 

was for some time treated in a chapter apart ; not until 
the nineties of the last century did psychologists realise 
that it gave them experimental control of action; and 
so the technique has been complicated and the outline 
filled in without special reference to the psychology of 
action. We need not here go into details ; it is enough 
to say that experimenters have tried the effect of increas- 
ing the number of stimuli, and thus of leaving the reactor 
more or less uncertain of what he shall expect ; of increas- 
ing the number of possible responsive movements ; and 
of varying the instruction given beforehand to the 
reactor, in such wise that a particular responsive move- 
ment is assigned to a particular stimulus, or that re- 
sponse is made to certain stimuli but not to certain others. 
All these forms of compound reaction have an interest of 
their own, which makes their analysis desirable ; they 
enable us to trace the establishment and course of de- 
termining tendencies, the tendencies set up by the 
instructions; and some of them throw light upon the 
psychology of negative instruction (p. 250). Only, as 
we have said, they do not represent the different types 
of action. Things are now changing; but a great deal 
of work must be done before we obtain typical analyses 
of the actions discussed in the preceding paragraphs. 

In one respect, this historical severance of the reac- 
tion experiment from the special psychology of action 
has been of scientific advantage ; it has left experi- 
menters free to employ the reaction method in any 
connection in which it promised to be of service. The 
technique of the reaction experiment has, in fact, proved 
useful in many investigations, in which the psychology of 



254 Action 

action is not involved. Thus, we may measure the time 
required for response at different levels of attention, the 
time required (under various circumstances) for recog- 
nition, the time required for the discrimination of sen- 
sations whose stimuli are more or less alike, and so on. 
There are a great many experiments into which this 
feature of time-measurement may be introduced; and 
when they have been often repeated, and standard times 
have been determined, the times themselves and the 
numerical statement of their constancy become psycho- 
logically significant (p. 242) ; they indicate, in a sort of 
short-hand way, what the observer has done and how 
uniformly he has done it. One of the most valuable 
extensions of the reaction experiment, from the prac- 
tical point of view, is the association reaction ; words 
are shown or called out to the observer, who replies in 
every case by the first word that comes into his mind. 
This experiment may be performed with abnormal as 
well as with normal reactors, and the results are of im- 
portance to the alienist. It has also been employed 
with a view to the detection of crime : a series of words, 
some of which bear upon the circumstances of the crime, 
is presented to the supposedly guilty person, and the 
time of his response to the critical words is taken as an 
indication of his guilt or innocence. Under laboratory 
conditions, with ' crimes ' invented for the sake of the 
experiment, some rather surprising results have been 
obtained; but there have also been flat failures; and 
no one can yet say positively whether the association 
reaction will have its place in the legal procedure of the 
future. 



§ 6o. Will, Wish and Desire 255 

All these word-reactions move in the realm of mean- 
ings, which are the practically important things ; there 
is no reason, however, why experiments of the kind 
described on p. 161 should not be accompanied by time- 
measurements. We have already suggested that moods 
might be timed (p. 227) ; and it is possible to measure 
the time required for the arousal of a sense-feeling, as 
well as to note its duration. On the whole, therefore, 
the reaction experiment or, as we may now term it, the 
reaction method should play an even larger part in the 
experimental psychology of the future than it has 
played in the past. 

§ 60. Will, Wish and Desire. — The compound re- 
actions have led us into a digression. But, if the tradi- 
tional forms — the discriminative, cognitive and choice 
reactions — are off the main track of the psychology of 
action, they still throw light on the establishment of 
determining tendencies to action, and in so far con- 
tribute to the psychology of will. For will, taken in a 
psychological and not in a moral sense, is simply the 
general name for the sum total of tendencies, inherited 
and acquired, that determine our actions; and we dis- 
tinguish different types of will, according as these ten- 
dencies to action manifest themselves, characteristically, 
in different ways. The man of strong will is one whose 
tendencies are so deep-seated and persistent that he 
attains his end, or at any rate continues to strive towards 
it, however remote it may be and however numerous the 
counter-suggestions that oppose it ; and the man of weak 
will is one whose tendencies are so instable that he is at 



256 Action 

the mercy of every fresh suggestion that comes. James 
remarks that, when the will is healthy, action follows, 
neither too slowly nor too rapidly, as the resultant of all 
the forces engaged; whereas, when it is unhealthy, 
action is either explosive or obstructed : the mercurial 
or dare-devil temperament shows an explosive will, 
" discharging so promptly into movements that inhibi- 
tions get no time to arise " ; and the limp characters, 
the failures, sentimentalists, drunkards, schemers, show 
the obstructed will, in which " impulsion is insufficient 
or inhibition in excess." Divisions of this sort might 
be pushed much further; but here, as in the parallel 
case of temperament (p. 227), it is enough to indicate 
the lines along which classification may proceed. 

The terms ' wish ' and ' desire ' come to us from 
popular psychology, and cover a great variety of actual 
experience. If we are willing to speak somewhat ar- 
bitrarily, we may say that a desire appears when some 
particular tendency to action, which has present control 
of the nervous system, is thwarted by external circum- 
stances, while the goal of action is still regarded as attain- 
able ; and that a wish appears when some tendency to 
action rises to momentary dominance, but is promptly 
met by inhibiting tendencies, while the goal of action 
is regarded as unattainable. This statement of the dif- 
ference between desire and wish will not fit every case, 
for the reason that the terms are popular, and not tech- 
nical, and that their meanings are not sharply distin- 
guished either in ordinary speech or in psychology. 
The experiences themselves, if we seek to compare them 
with the experiences discussed in previous chapters, 



§ 6o. Will, Wish and Desire 257 

approach most nearly to sense-feelings. Desire is a 
straining-exciting, and wish a straining-subduing feel- 
ing; and both desire and wish may be either pleasur- 
able or unpleasurable, according as the focal idea is the 
idea of result, of the goal of action, or the idea of its 
(present or permanent) inaccessibility. The existence 
of these ideas, however, and the play of associative 
tendencies which it implies, set desire and wish upon a 
higher plane of mental development than the sense- 
feelings ; and the fact of direction, of the pressure of 
determining tendencies, marks another difference be- 
tween the two kinds of experience. 

This reference to sense-feeling reminds us of the doc- 
trine, common to the associationist psychology and to 
modern popular psychology, that ' pleasure and pain ' 
are the sole determinants of action. Bain, for instance, 
tells us that " the proper stimulus of the will, namely 
some variety of pleasure or pain," is always " needed 
to give the impetus"; "that primary constitution, 
under which our activity is put in motion by our feel- 
ings," remains unchanged through the whole history 
of mind. Spencer, as we have seen (p. 86), regards it 
as a corollary to the general law of organic evolution 
that " pleasures and pains have necessarily been the 
incentives to, and deterrents from, actions which the 
conditions of existence demanded and negatived"; 
our actions are always ' guided ' by pleasures and pains, 
immediate or remote. Leslie Stephen, who is in the 
main a disciple of Spencer, writes in his brilliant Science 
of Ethics : " pain and pleasure are the determining causes 
of action ; it may even be said that they are the sole 



258 Action 

and the ultimate causes." And, lastly, — though the 
list of quotations might be greatly extended, — Professor 
Sully asserts that " the prompting forces in our volun- 
tary action are feelings." 

It is true that there is oftentimes a close relation 
between feeling and action ; we gave some examples on 
p. 231. It is also true, however, that there are number- 
less actions into which feeling does not enter. The 
associationist school have, therefore, fallen into a mis- 
take the opposite of that which we laid at their door on 
p. 161 ; as they look at the course of ideas in too intellec- 
tual a way, so do they look at action in too emotional a 
way. They also repeat a mistake which we noted on 
p. 146. There we found that an idea is supposed to 
have a ' power ' to recall another idea ; Hume refers to 
association as "a kind of attraction " which one idea 
exerts upon another. So here the feelings are supposed 
to have a ' power ' to arouse or prevent or deflect ac- 
tions ; they are used to explain conduct, precisely as the 
laws of association are used to explain the course of 
ideas. Both these theories betray a misunderstanding 
of the psychological problem. 

We must conclude, then, that the associationists are 
at fault in their observation ; for even if the earliest 
impulsive actions (p. 244) were invariably preceded by 
feeling, — and that is a matter of guesswork, — it is 
still true that our present actions show no such uniform- 
ity. We conclude, also, that the explanation of action 
is to be found in the determining tendencies of the 
nervous system, and not in the motive force of feeling. 



Questions and Exercises 259 

Questions and Exercises 

(1) (a) It is said on p. 232 that " the present is a good time 
for repeating " certain cautions. Now that you have read 
the chapter, can you see why the statement was made? 
(b) Criticise, in your own words, the doctrine that pleasure 
and pain have ' power ' to determine actions. 

(2) Give from your own experience instances (a) of 
sensorimotor and ideomotor action, and (b) of the passage 
of selective or volitional action into some simpler form. 
Make your account as detailed as possible. 

(3) Draw up a table, in the form of a genealogical tree, 
of the various kinds of action discussed in this chapter. 
Write a psychological formula for every kind. Where does 
instinctive action come in? 

(4) Give instances, from history or fiction, (a) of selective 
action, (b) of volitional action, and (c) of conflicts from which 
a volitional action might have resulted, but did not. 

(5) Name (a) some of the principal human reflexes, and 
(b) some of the artificial reflexes most commonly acquired 
by civilised man. 

(6) The following statements occur in various psychological 
works: (a) every impulse is at the same time emotion; 
(b) every emotion is at the same time impulse; (c) every 
emotion is at the same time instinct ; (d) every instinct is 
an impulse. What comment have you to make? 

(7) What evidence can you offer for the hypothesis (p. 245) 
that impulsive actions are, in the history of the race, as old 
as tropisms? 

(8) Suppose that you perform a selective action ; the 
action issues from a conflict of determining tendencies; 
you ' decide ' among various possibilities of action. Does 
the decision always take place in the same way, or can you 
distinguish ' types ' of decision ? — Do not hurry to answer 
the question ; keep it by you, and answer it in the light of 
experience. 



260 Action 

(9) We saw that the motor reaction (which has its counter- 
part in everyday life) is a telescoped impulsive action. Can 
you mention any other kinds of action (also occurring in 
everyday life) which do not find their precise place under the 
headings of the chapter? 

(10) What kinds of action are involved in the product of 
constructive imagination ? 

(11) (a) What is the chief psychological difference be- 
tween hesitation and deliberation ? (b) Give, from your own 
experience, a detailed analysis of some desire. 

(12) It is very important that you should become ac- 
quainted with the reaction experiment, and should analyse a 
number of reactions. Many instrumental outfits are on the 
market; one of the simplest is President E. C. Sanford's 
vernier chronoscope (C. H. Stoelting Co.). When you have 
familiarised yourself with the experiment, try to plan an 
experimental study of selective and volitional actions. 

References 

W. James, Principles of Psychology, ii., 1890, ch. xxvi. ; 
W. Wundt, Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology, 
1896, Lects. xviii., xxix. ; Outlines of Psychology, 1907, 
§ 14 ; E. B. Titchener, Text-book of Psychology, 1910, 428 ff. 

Special references are : T. H. Huxley, Lessons in Elemen- 
tary Physiology, Lesson xi. (1896, 302) ; C. L. Morgan, 
Animal Behaviour, 1900, 138 ; A. Bain, The Emotions and 
the Will: The Will, ch. iii. (1880, 352 and elsewhere); 
H. Spencer, The Principles of Ethics, L, ch. xiv. (1892, 244 
and elsewhere) ; L. Stephen, The Science of Ethics, 1882, 50 ; 
J. Sully, The Human Mind, ii., 1892, 2, 236. The technique 
of the vernier chronoscope is described by Titchener, Ex- 
perimental Psychology, I., L, 1901, 117 ff . ; ii., 212 ff. 



CHAPTER X 

Thought 

I myself am inclined to hold that man really thinks very little and very 
seldom. — Wilhelm Wundt 

§ 6i. The Nature of Thought. — " The train of 
thoughts, or mental discourse," wrote Hobbes in 1651, 
" is of two sorts. The first is unguided, without de- 
sign, and inconstant; in which case the thoughts are 
said to wander, and seem impertinent one to another, 
as in a dream. The second is more constant ; as being 
regulated by some desire, and design': and because the 
end, by the greatness of the impression, comes often 
to mind, in case our thoughts begin to wander, they are 
quickly again reduced into the way." Hobbes is here 
distinguishing, so far as unaided observation allows 
him, between the mental connections that reflect a ran- 
dom play of the associative tendencies, and those whose 
course is directed by some determining tendency. The 
former, to be sure, are never wholly random ; ideas are 
grouped together by the situation in which they appear 
(p. 165) ; and it is only fair to say that Hobbes himself, 
in other passages, recognises this guidance. There is, 
nevertheless, a marked difference between the two 
kinds of ' mental discourse,' between (say) the casual 
flow of conversation and the working out of an argu- 
ment ; and it is the second kind, the progressive move- 

261 



262 Thought 

merit of ideas towards an end, that modern psychology 
has technically named thought. 

You notice that we have spoken of a ' progressive ' 
movement; and you notice that Hobbes writes a little 
cautiously of regulated discourse ; even in that, our 
thoughts may ' begin to wander.' These are merely 
different ways of saying that thought goes on in the state 
of secondary attention; it is an experience of the same 
general type as recollection, constructive imagination, se- 
lective and volitional action. We therefore ' think,' 
in the technical sense, far less often than the popular 
use of the word would suggest. For, on the one hand, 
we accept a great many judgements, ready made, from 
our surroundings ; parents and teachers and friends are 
constantly expressing opinions which we adopt without 
question, opinions which they themselves have adopted, 
for the most part, in the same unquestioning way. The 
present generation takes the motor-car and the air-ship 
for granted ; it finds them natural and obvious ; and 
every generation falls heir to a body of social, political, 
religious, aesthetic, and moral judgements which also 
seem natural and obvious; thought is not needed, and 
so is rarely undertaken. Secondly, even if we are 
obliged to think, we still tend to think no further than 
is necessary for the practice of life ; we attain a certain 
level of thought, in the mastery of our business or pro- 
fession, and there stop ; the pattern of secondary atten- 
tion is replaced by that of derived primary attention. 
Most of our thought, in other words, is either borrowed 
thought or routine thought, that is, is not (in the psycho- 
logical sense) thought at all; independent, sustained, 



§ 62. Imaginal Processes in Thought 263 

original thinking is as rare as creative imagination or 
as sagacious and farsighted action. In all probability, 
it always has been rare ; our ancestors probably thought 
as we think, only a few with real seriousness, and they 
only between whiles; but a very little thinking gives 
man an immense superiority over the lower animals ! 

We have now to ask, first, about the terms in which 
thought goes on ; and we shall find that it may go on in 
imaginal complexes, in words, and in mental attitudes. 
We then discuss the pattern of thought; and we shall 
find that thinking is characterised by the ' division into 
pairs ' which we mentioned on p. 205. Lastly, we shall 
take up, separately, some of the special features of this 
general pattern. 

§ 62. Imaginal Processes in Thought: The Abstract 

Idea. — A great deal of controversy has raged about the 
abstract or general idea. We can see to-day that the 
name is, psychologically, a misnomer. Just as no idea 
is, in its own right, an idea of memory or of imagina- 
tion, so also no idea is, in its own right, an abstract 
idea; an idea becomes, is made into, an abstract idea 
whenever its context and determination carry the meaning 
of abstractness and generality. The associationists, how- 
ever, looked at things differently; they thought that 
any idea which means ' abstract ' must also itself be 
abstract; and so they distinguished a special class of 
abstract ideas. We obtain such ideas, they said, in this 
way: we review a large number of particular ideas, 
and we separate out the elements that are common to 
all of them ; this common remainder is then a general 



264 Thought 

or abstract idea which represents the whole group of 
particulars. Thus, " by leaving out of the particular 
colours perceived by sense that which distinguishes 
them one from another ; and retaining that only which 
is common to all ; the mind makes an idea of colour in 
abstract which is neither red, nor blue, nor white, nor 
any other determinate colour." 

An emphatic protest was raised against this theory 
by the idealistic philosopher George Berkeley (1685- 
1753). " The idea of man that I frame to myself must 
be either of a white or a black or a tawny, a straight or 
a crooked, a tall or a low or a middle-sized man. I cannot 
by any effort of thought conceive [that is, mentally pic- 
ture] the abstract idea above described." It is, truly, a 
little difficult to imagine an abstract ' colour ' with all the 
specific colour-elements left out ! Yet the theory is so 
plausible, as long as process and meaning are confused, 
that it has been revived again, though in somewhat 
altered form. The suggestion has been made that an 
abstract idea is a sort of composite photograph, a mental 
picture which results from the superposition of many 
particular perceptions or ideas, and which therefore 
shows the common elements distinct and the individual 
elements blurred. A passage from Huxley illustrates 
this view. " An anatomist who occupies himself in- 
tently with the examination of several specimens of 
some new kind of animal, in course of time acquires so 
vivid a conception of its form and structure, that the 
idea may take visible shape and become a sort of wak- 
ing dream. But the figure which thus presents itself is 
generic, not specific. It is no copy of any one speci- 



§ 62. Imaginal Processes in Thought 265 

men, but, more or less, a mean of the series." To which 
we reply that ' the figure which presents itself ' is as 
specific and particular as any other idea ; only, it means 
the genus ; the anatomist is working under the suggestion 
of a type, of a composite picture that will make a dia- 
gram in a text-book or monograph; and his idea is 
abstract in virtue of this determination and context, 
and not because it pictures the mean of a series. 

The fact is, to repeat, that any idea is made into an 
abstract idea when context and determination carry the 
meaning of abstractness ; and there is no doubt that, in 
minds of a certain type, imaginal processes other than 
words may take on this context and suffer this deter- 
mination, so that thought may go on in imaginal terms. 
Experiments show that visual imagery may play its 
part, along with verbal ideas and attitudes, in a single 
train of thought; one recent writer describes visual 
images of a complex kind as centres of ' activity ' in 
the progress of thinking. Blindfold chess-players, if 
they are of the motor type, think of attack and defence 
in terms of ' lines of force ' which connect the various 
pieces on the board, and which they themselves ' feel ' 
in kinesthetic imagery as pushes and pulls in hand and 
arm. We saw on p. 77 that such general notions as 
' virtue ' and ' commerce ' may come to mind in the 
form of habitual images. No doubt, these images were 
at first contextual processes surrounding a verbal idea ; 
they are therefore secondary, and not original ; yet they 
may now replace the verbal idea, and do duty by them- 
selves as abstract ideas. There are probably a good 
many of us whose abstract idea of ' triangle ' is simply 



266 Thought 

a mental picture of the little equilateral triangle that 
stands for the word in text-books of geometry. 

Is there, then, no truth at all in the theory of the com- 
posite photograph? Not an atom, so far as regards the 
genesis of the abstract idea ; one might superpose indi- 
vidual ideas ad infinitum, and one would still have 
nothing more than an individual idea. But if we leave 
the abstract idea out of the question, and consider the 
history of ideas, in minds of the imaginal type, then the 
composite photograph has more to say for itself. For we 
know from p. 156 that the associative tendencies, if left 
to themselves, gradually die out ; and that the weaker 
die out more quickly than the stronger. Consider what 
this means ! I have a mental picture of a landscape, 
and I do not see the actual scene for some years. The 
picture fades out; but it fades out unevenly; its va- 
rious features are correlated with associative tendencies 
of varying strength. So I shall always imagine a semi- 
circle of mountains with the valley opening towards 
me, and the river meandering down the valley ; for these 
are features common to many landscapes and strongly 
impressed upon my nervous system ; but I shall lose 
the relative heights of the mountains, and the particular 
turns of the river, and the special distribution of vil- 
lages and churches ; for these are individual features, 
and have been less frequently repeated. My mental 
picture of the landscape thus approaches a type; and the 
same thing is true of all complex images, if they are left 
to themselves, and the underlying associative tendencies 
decay from old age. These typical images are, never- 
theless, ideas of particular scenes or things or faces; 



§ 63. Thought and Language 267 

their rounding and smoothing do not make them ab- 
stract; while, conversely, the image that carries an 
abstract meaning may be as firmly outlined as a steel 
engraving. The typical image depends upon the in- 
herent strength and weakness of associative tendencies ; 
the abstract meaning is due to determinations which 
cut across the associative tendencies, perhaps to arrest 
or short-circuit, perhaps to rearrange them ; there can 
be no necessary connection between typical image and 
abstract idea. 

§63. Thought and Language. — It has often been 
said that thought would be impossible without words; 
and it is true that we can hardly conceive of human 
thought save as formed and embodied and expressed in 
language. Thought and articulate speech grew up, so 
to say, side by side ; each implies the other ; they are 
two sides of the same phase of mental development. 
The old conundrum 'Why don't the animals talk? 
Because they have nothing to say ' contains so much of 
sound psychology; if the animals thought, they would 
undoubtedly use their vocal organs for speech ; and 
since they do not talk, they cannot either be thinking. 
All this is true : and yet we must acknowledge that 
thought is not necessarily wedded to speech; it probably 
appeared, at least in rudimentary guise, before words 
came into being, and it persists (so to say) after words 
have ceased to be. There is a gesture-language that 
can serve as the medium of thought, and that is probably 
older than speech ; and there is a thinking in images 
and attitudes that dispenses with words. 



268 Thought 

A gesture is an expressive movement; and all gestures 
have their origin in the movements that express emotion. 
But a gesture can serve as the medium of thought only 
if it is made with the intention to communicate, to impart 
some meaning; and it is this intention that seems to 
be the important thing, the specifically human endow- 
ment ; though we can say nothing more of it now than 
that it is one of the ingrained tendencies of our nervous 
system (p. 135). Gestures, at any rate, can give rise 
to a language of their own; and we may study this 
language in various dialects ; among deaf-mutes who 
have not been subject to special training; in the Cis- 
tercian communities, which are vowed to silence in the 
ordinary affairs of life ; among uncivilised peoples, like 
the Indian tribes of North America ; and finally in the 
lower strata of civilised societies, — here the Southern 
Italians are typical. There is a strong family resem- 
blance throughout. We find that gestures express both 
the feeling-side and the idea-side of emotions ; and we 
find, naturally enough, that development has gone further 
on the side of idea, where the gesture becomes a means 
for the expression of thought. The simplest kind of 
ideational gesture is the demonstrative, which points 
towards, directly indicates, the object that excites emo- 
tion ; we point our finger at the thing that has frightened 
us, or shake our fist at the man who has made us angry. 
Representative gesture depicts the object : whether 
by a finger-drawing of its outline in the air, or by the 
reproduction of one of its characteristic features, or by 
some purely symbolic movement. Thus, a deaf-mute 
gesture for ' smoke ' is a spiral action of the forefinger 



§ 63. Thought and Language 269 

from below upwards; for ' child,' the action of cradling 
and rocking the right elbow in the left hand ; for ' truth/ 
the movement of the forefinger in a straight line from 
the mouth. This gesture-language has its own syntax, 
its own laws of growth and change, its own psychological 
history ; but it could not hold its own against articulate 
speech. 

The struggle was, in all probability, brief ; because, at 
the very beginning, speech itself was a gesture; the essen- 
tial thing about it was not the sound, but the movement. 
If, then, gesture-language is older than speech, it can 
hardly be much older ; for the sound that accompanied 
the gesture would soon attract attention, and the supe- 
riority of articulate sound over visible movement would 
soon be recognised. Attempts have been made, of course, 
— we may say ' of course ' at this point of our psycho- 
logical knowledge ! — to read a meaning into the sounds 
themselves. There is a theory which traces the origin 
of language to the imitation of natural sounds, and so 
makes it begin with words like hiss and roar; and there 
is a theory which traces it to ejaculations and merely 
mechanical utterances, and so makes it begin with oh 
and ah and a sort of infantile babble. Neither of these 
theories will hold water. Apart from the psychological 
arguments, which we cannot here set forth, there is the 
evidence of fact : words like hiss and roar form a very 
small part of the vocabulary of any language ; exclama- 
tions and interjections are emotive and not ideational, 
and have had but little development ; and the babble of 
the human infant is not primitive, but corresponds with 
a stage in the maturing of an inherited speech-mechan- 



270 Thought 

ism. No ! the sound was, at first, simply the incidental 
accompaniment of the gesture, of a movement which in- 
cluded the muscles of the larynx ; it derived its meaning 
from the gesture-context; and presently, under the 
influence of continued social intercourse, it proved its 
superiority to gesture and acquired its independence. 
We may say in the large that the word heard has never 
had any other than a derivative and symbolic meaning, 
and that the self-sufficiency of the word-gesture, combined 
sound and movement, is the origin of language. 

What a word should ' mean/ therefore, depended in 
the first instance upon the context and determination of 
the articulated sound. Just as any idea may serve as 
an abstract idea, so may any word whatever serve as an 
abstract verbal idea, as what is technically called a 
concept, provided only that its context and determina- 
tion carry the meaning of abstractness. We saw, how- 
ever, that the context of the abstract idea may drop 
away, and the mental correlates of its determination 
lapse, so that finally some conventional image, like the 
triangle, is taken as abstract, wears the very stamp of 
abstractness upon it. This is preeminently the case 
with words. Every generation, we must remember, 
inherits the speech of preceding generations ; language 
comes to us ready made. We learn from the study of 
language itself that the abstract words were originally 
concrete; thus the Latin sapio, to taste, sapor, taste, 
are connected with sapa, must, sapo, soap, sebum, tallow, 
— with the names of substances that are readily diluted 
or liquefied ; but the situations that made them abstract 
dropped out of mind long ago. The child finds language 



§ 64. Mental Attitudes 271 

waiting for it, and finds that every word incorporates 
a meaning; and so it comes about, not only that the 
mental representation of honesty or pride may be the 
mere word, ' honesty ' or ' pride,' as it occurs in internal 
speech, but also that the same internal speech embodies 
the meaning of abstractness ; the verbal image stands 
psychologically for an idea and logically for a meaning, 

§ 64. Mental Attitudes. — If you look back over a 
course of thought, you will find verbal ideas, and you 
will perhaps find imaginal complexes of various kinds ; 
but you will also find experiences of another sort, which 
have come to be known as mental attitudes. They are 
vague and elusive processes, which carry as if in a nut- 
shell the entire meaning of a situation. Some of them 
belong to the feeling-side of mind : for feeling enters into 
the train of directed thought no less than into the freer 
play of association (p. 161) : they are reported as ' feel- 
ings ' of hesitation, vacillation, incapacity, expectancy, 
surprise, triviality, relevancy, and so on. Others are 
more nearly related to ideas; they are generally reported 
by a phrase beginning with ' I knew that . . . ,' ' I was 
sure that . . . ,' 'I realised that . . . ,' or some like 
expression. Suppose, for instance, that the observer 
is required to solve ' in his head ' some mathematical 
problem, or to think out the answer to some difficult 
question that bears upon his special line of study. He 
may say, in the course of his report : " At that point 
it occurred to me that I had lost the first partial product," 
" It seemed to me that the whole thing was taking too 
long a time," " I suddenly realised that I had never 



272 Thought 

thought of that before," " It flashed upon me that the 
question was only another form of the old difficulty," 
" I could not see the answer, but I knew that I could 
work it out," and so forth. All these //?a/-clauses may 
stand for mental attitudes. 

It is clear that, so far as the verbal expressions go, 
the observer is reporting meanings and not processes. 
Our task is, then, to discover what processes lie behind 
the meanings; and here the opinions of psychologists are 
sharply at variance. One party believes that the mental 
attitudes are unique and simple, that they cannot be 
further analysed, and that they must therefore be given 
rank as mental elements alongside of sensation and feel- 
ing. Another party, to which the author belongs, be- 
lieves that the attitudes are analysable, if only they are 
taken out of the thought-context and examined by 
themselves under more favourable conditions, and that 
their analysis yields nothing else than sensations and 
feelings. The whole matter is still under discussion, 
and you will do best to suspend judgement. Meantime 
we may look at a couple of instances. 

Consider, first, the attitude of expectation. It is not 
difficult to devise experiments which shall set up in the 
observer an expectant attitude ; thus, in a very simple 
case, the experimenter might hang a weight by a cord 
to the ceiling, tie a loose piece of string to the cord, and 
light the end of the string; the observer would then 
watch the progress of the flame, expecting that it will 
presently reach the cord, burn that, and so cause the 
weight to fall to the floor. What are the processes in 
the observer's mind as he watches ? You will naturally 



§ 64. Mental Attitudes 273 

think of an image ; the observer will imagine the fall 
of the weight. Not necessarily; not even usually; 
the image of expectation must go the same road as the image 
of recognition (p. 184). Ordinarily, expectation consists 
simply of kinesthetic and organic sensations; sometimes 
there are verbal ideas ; only occasionally is there an 
image. If the experience is novel, the sensations are 
likely to he tinged by feeling; there is a trace of 
anxiety, of apprehension. Analysis reveals nothing 
more. 

We have, then, in expectation a directed experience ; 
the perception of the flaming string acts as a suggestion, 
turning the observer's mental processes into a single 
channel. The kinaesthetic and organic sensations derive 
in part from the bodily attitude of attention : tense 
muscles, inhibited breathing, adjustment of the organ 
of sight. Yet the observer is not merely attentive; 
the suggestion, the determination is there ; and the sen- 
sations derive in part from that. They are contextual 
processes, and carry the meaning that ' so-and-so is 
going to happen.' They are therefore precisely like 
the ' sensations of intended movement ' that charac- 
terise the motor reaction (p. 241) ; we might even call 
them, following that analogy, ' sensations of future occur- 
rence.' All the same, they are, if we regard them as 
processes, just kinaesthetic and organic sensations, held 
together in a certain pattern by the perceptive sugges- 
tion; expectation shows nothing unique or ultimate 
behind or beyond them. 

In course of time, if the situation is repeated, the 
feeling of anxiety fades away, and the experience be- 



274 Thought 

comes indifferent. With still further repetition, the 
' sensations of future occurrence ' also drop away ; the 
suggestion from the flaming string then sets the organ- 
ism, automatically, for the coming event; and the set 
has no mental correlates whatever. 

A like procedure might be followed with vacillation, 
triviality, and the rest ; and the outcome, in the author's 
belief, would be the same. It is less easy to attack the 
intellectual attitudes, those expressed by that-claMses. 
Suppose, however, that you have to write two letters : 
the one to an intimate friend, dealing with your home- 
life and things that have happened in your immediate 
circle, and the other to a business correspondent, re- 
garding some contract that must be drawn up in pre- 
cise terms. Do you not sit down to write with a felt 
difference of bodily attitude, almost as if in the two cases 
you were a different organism? There are different 
visceral pressures, differences of tonicity in the muscles 
of back and legs, differences in the sensed play of facial 
expression, differences in the movements of arm and 
hand in the intervals of setting pen to paper, rather 
obvious differences in respiration, and marked differ- 
ences of local or general involuntary movement, — 
all of them deriving from the different suggestions or 
determinations which prompt the letters. Here, then, 
are two thats: ' I was sure that he would be interested 
in any gossip,' and ' I knew very well that I had to 
write carefully ' ; and the processes that carry these 
meanings seem, again, to reduce to a certain pattern 
of kinesthetic and organic sensations, tinged very 
likely by feeling. When observation reveals such a 



§ 65. The Pattern of Thought 275 

wealth of sensory processes, it seems unnecessary to assume 
a new mental element for the intellectual attitudes. 

We saw on p. 4 that the concern of science is with 
facts. But just because facts are the staple of science, 
it is well that we should be a little jealous about them, 
that we should scrutinise every alleged fact as severely 
as our methods allow, and criticise it in the light of every 
possible theory. That is the present condition of the 
mental attitude ; experiments are being made, and argu- 
ments brought forward, for and against its novelty and 
uniqueness ; and the struggle must be carried through 
to the bitter end; for only in that way can the truth 
come stably to light. Meantime, those who are in the 
fight must of necessity take a side ; the onlooker, as we 
have said, is well advised to await the issue. 

§ 65. The Pattern of Thought. — There is a broad 
general resemblance between the pattern of thought and 
that of constructive imagination; it has indeed been said, 
though with exaggeration, that thought is an imagining 
in words, and imagination a thinking in images. The 
thinker, like the artist, sets out with a plan or design, 
and aims at a goal ; and thought, like imagination, is a 
more or less steady flow, in a single direction, from the 
fountain-head of nervous disposition. ' Happy thoughts ' 
occur in thinking, as they occur in imagination; there 
is a like movement between the poles of feeling; and 
the empathic experiences of the artist are paralleled by 
the mental attitudes of the thinker. In all these re- 
spects, the pattern of thought repeats what has been said 
on pp. 198 ff. of the pattern of constructive imagination. 



276 Thought 

Thought, however, has its distinctive features; for it is 
subject to two of the great directive tendencies that we 
mentioned on p. 205 : the tendency to objectify, to find 
' real things ' in the world about us, and the tendency 
to dual division. The tendency to objectify underlies 
perception as well as thought ; the earliest ' real things ' 
were, we must suppose, external and material things ; 
but with the growth of ideas the tendency bears also 
upon the things of mind, upon concepts and abstract 
ideas ; these are taken as real in every case of think- 
ing. The tendency to dual division is characteristic 
of thought ; thinking is essentially divisive, even if the 
goal of thought is constructive. Here, then, is the main 
difference between thought and constructive imagina- 
tion: that imagination proceeds to the exhibition of a 
single something, a statue or a picture or a poem; 
whereas thought proceeds to the exhibition of two some- 
things in relation, and ends with what the logicians call 
a judgement. 

The tendency to dual division is so natural to us, and 
is impressed so deeply in our nervous make-up, that we 
can hardly hope to go behind it. We can hardly even 
describe a situation which calls for thought without 
presupposing the very tendency which is characteristic 
of thought. For what are the situations? They are 
situations which ask a question; and we cannot ask a 
question without putting it in the form of a judgement. 
Primitive man, wandering from place to place, comes 
back to a scene that he knew under other circumstances ; 
the tree which was leafy is now bare, the river-bed which 
was full of water is now dry. If there is no feeling of 



§ 65. The Pattern of Thought 277 

familiarity, and therefore no recognition, the situation 
may still ask him : ' Same ? ' and his reply ' Same scene ; 
different features ' is the reply of thought. He has 
tried to understand things ; his secondary attention has 
played upon the scene perceived and the scene remem- 
bered ; he has in the upshot divided the permanent from 
the changing, the ' thing ' from the ' properties ' of the 
thing ; he has reached a conclusion, or formed a judgement. 
All thought is of this kind, an answer to a question. Let 
us take the case of a scientific problem. Suppose that 
flints, which bear the marks of human workmanship, 
are found in a Pliocene bed, which has apparently 
remained undisturbed. The geologist is called upon to 
decide whether the deposit really has been undisturbed, 
so that the ' find ' is reliable evidence of the existence of 
man in Tertiary times. The situation asks him a 
number of questions : has the bed been misplaced by 
faulting? can the materials have been brought to their 
present position by water? are there any signs that 
Quaternary man used the place ? are the flints associated 
with bones of Tertiary animals ? and so on and so forth. 
He forms a whole series of judgements; feature after 
feature of the situation is attended to, and every one in 
its turn is supplemented by ideas derived from previous 
knowledge; there is the familiar conflict of secondary 
attention, repeated over and over. Every judgement 
affirms or denies some property of the situation, in 
accordance with the original problem ; and the out- 
come of the series of judgements, of the whole train of 
thought, is a final judgement, — still, of course, under 
the determination of the problem, — ' this bed has (or 



278 Thought 

has not) been disturbed'. If the flints themselves are 
only doubtfully of human workmanship, then the situa- 
tion is doubly complicated ; the questions and the partial 
judgements are more numerous ; but the general pat- 
tern of thought is the same. 

The tendency to dual division shows itself, then, in 
the form of the judgement, in the opposition of ' sub- 
ject ' to ' predicate ' ; it shows itself further in the gram- 
matical distinctions of substantive and adjective, verb 
and object, verb and adverb. And all thought or reason- 
ing seems to reduce, in the last resort, to a succession of 
judgements which, under the particular suggestion or deter- 
mination, exhausts the possibilities of dual division. The 
duality, however, is not always obvious at first glance. 
Ideas are involved ; and the arousal of a particular idea 
may mean the excitement of a whole nest of associative 
tendencies; subject or predicate or both may thus be 
supplemented in manifold wise ; and the train of thought 
may appear to be variously and irregularly divided. 
Only a careful observation will show that these supple- 
mentary processes derive, not directly from the suggest- 
ive situation, but rather from the secondary excitement 
of associative tendencies. Moreover, the judgements 
themselves are not always explicit; they may occur 
in nutshell form, as mental attitudes. The tendency to 
dual division is thus masked in two ways: by incidental 
associations, and by attitudes. It seems, nevertheless, 
to underlie the whole structure of thought. 

We are still in the dark as to psychological details. 
We have evidence that there is no psychological differ- 
ence between an affirmative and a negative judgement ; 



§ 65. The Pattern of Thought 279 

but we do not even know whether the judgement, 
affirmative and negative, implies a specific mental pat- 
tern of its own, as the idea implies the pattern of core 
and context, or whether it may express a variety of 
patterns. On the whole, the latter alternative seems 
the more probable ; if there is any stable characteristic 
of the judgement, it is not a definite pattern or arrangement 
of mental processes, but rather a definite mental attitude, 
the ' feeling of validity ' ; and this attitude seems to 
be allied to the feeling of familiarity in recognition, and 
so to be remotely akin to the emotion of relief. As far 
as our evidence goes, it appears to accompany every 
true judgement, that is to say, every judgement which 
is formed in the state of secondary attention. A ' feel- 
ing of relation ' need not accompany the final judge- 
ment, but is likely to crop up here and there in the course 
of a train of thought, assuring us that certain things 
go together, belong to the same ' circle ' of ideas, and 
that certain other things are contradictory, and cannot 
go together. These relational feelings or attitudes are 
contextual affairs, deriving probably from the kinass- 
thesis of bodily attitude ; they are, however, very diffi- 
cult to analyse, and their precise psychological nature is 
still in dispute. 

In conclusion, let us revert for a moment to the com- 
parison of thought with constructive imagination. We 
have said that the two are broadly similar ; and we may 
now add that judgements occur in imagination, and 
fetches of imagination in a train of thought. The dif- 
ferences are, nevertheless, great enough to justify the 
popular distinction of the two mental modes ; for thought 



280 Thought 

advances by repeated dissections of a situation which is 
taken as real, while imagination realises in the work of 
art a situation which at first was vague or fragmentary. 

§ 66. Abstraction and Generalisation. — We have 
spoken of the abstract or general idea, as if the two ad- 
jectives were interchangeable; and abstraction and 
generalisation are, in fact, only two phases of the same pro- 
cedure. When we abstract, we pick out the features 
of a situation that are relevant to our present determina- 
tion, and neglect the other features. When we general- 
ise, we bring to light resemblances that have been merged 
with differences; but this statement implies that we 
neglect the differences, as irrelevant, and pick out the 
likenesses, as relevant; generalisation is thus only a 
special case of abstraction. We have seen that every 
suggestion is double-faced, positive as well as negative ; 
and we may perhaps say that in thinking of abstraction 
we emphasise the negative face, the discarding of the 
irrelevant, while in thinking of generalisation we empha- 
sise the positive face, the bringing together of the simi- 
lars which are relevant. 

Experiments upon abstraction may be made in the 
manner outlined on p. 250: a complex stimulus (say, 
a visual stimulus that shows differences of colour, of 
number, of arrangement) is exhibited for a brief time; 
the observer is asked to attend to some one aspect of 
it (say, colour) ; and then, his report given, is asked to 
state what he can of the other aspects (number and form) . 
Two general results may be mentioned. It is found, 
as might perhaps have been expected, that things which 



§ 66. Abstraction and Generalisation 281 

make the least appeal to attention are also the things most 
easily overlooked. Colour and form, for instance, are 
more attractive than number; and when the observer 
is told to attend to colour or form, number may go en- 
tirely unnoticed; whereas, when he is told to attend to 
number, — a relatively difficult task, — he is still able 
to say something of colour and form. The result seems 
only natural ; but you may not see at once that it throws 
scientific light on a matter of some practical importance. 
We all know from sad experience that when thought, our 
own or another's, flows smoothly and easily, it is likely 
to be superficial ; the very smoothness of the flow means 
that difficulties have been overlooked. The obverse of 
this fact is, now, that if we struggle with the knotty 
points of a subject, we get a grip upon the whole ; the 
interesting and attractive things take care of themselves ; 
their native appeal to the attention keeps them in mind. 
So the experiments upon abstraction point a moral, 
at the same time that they illustrate the nervous mechan- 
ism of thought itself. They show, secondly, that the 
negative effect of abstraction varies in degree; the aspects 
of stimulus from which we abstract may be wholly 
suppressed, so that no report at all can be made of them, 
or may be apprehended indefinitely, so that the report 
is general ; thus, form may be correctly named, while 
the colours are reported merely as ' different,' or as 
1 dark.' Another significant result ! for it means that 
a concept is more easily touched of than a special name; 
we may fail to identify colours as red or blue when we 
can still say that they are dark or different. The reason 
is that the concept, the general name, is applied far 



282 



Thought 



of tener than the special name ; its associative tendencies 
are therefore both deeper seated and more numerous. 
We have a parallel case in the image of p. 266, which 
slowly loses its distinctive features and approaches a 
type ; and we have others in the gradual decay of mem- 
ory with old age : a grandfather may forget the names of 
his grandchildren, but he does not forget that they are 
' boys ' and ' girls.' 

Experiments upon generalisation, that is, upon the 
positive abstraction of similars, have been made by the 

aid of meaningless forms, 
grouped as in the figure. 
The groups were of vary- 
ing complexity, but al- 
ways contained one com- 
mon element; and the 
instruction given to the 
observer was that he 
should await the stimulus with as even as possible a 
distribution of attention, and then, when the figures 
appeared, should pick out the two that were alike. 
No less than six modes of procedure were distin- 
guished. The observer might work actively through 
the forms, one by one; this is a laborious method, 
and was employed for the most part only in the early 
experiments of the series. Or he might travel over 
the groups, back and forth, until some figure struck 
him as familiar; this is the method of simple recog- 
nition. Or again he might start out on his journey 
of exploration, and find himself suddenly arrested by an 
insistent form, some figure that stood out more clearly 

















k 


a? 




M 


& 










Sl 


n> 












^ 


& 















§ 6y. Comparison and Discrimination 283 

than its fellows. Here are mixed methods, part active 
search and part passive impression. In other cases, 
the two forms stood out in quick succession, as if the 
one had drawn the other after it; in still other cases, 
the two similars stood out simultaneously, sprang 
forth as if of their own accord. Lastly, in rare instances, 
passivity reached its maximum ; the observer looked 
at the field, was at once held by some outstanding form, 
and knew that this was the form required, although 
he had not remarked the presence of its pair. 

We cannot enter further into details ; nor, indeed, is 
the time ripe for discussion ; the experimental study 
of thought-procedures has hardly more than begun. 
You see, however, that the pattern of thought may vary 
widely in certain of its features, while yet the outcome of 
thought, the abstraction or generalisation, is the same ; 
and this conclusion may help you to understand why there 
need be no specific mental pattern for the judgement. 

§ 67. Comparison and Discrimination. — One of the 
commonest occurrences in a train of thought is the com- 
parison of present with past, the harking back to a former 
stage of the procedure in order to make sure that we 
have not missed or mistaken some item of experience; 
and one of the commonest tasks set in the psychological 
laboratory reduces this comparison to its lowest terms. 
Two stimuli are presented, in succession ; and the ob- 
server is required to say whether the intensity or quality 
of the corresponding sensations, the duration of the 
intervals, the magnitude of the forms, or whatever it 
may be, is the same or different. Both the stimuli 



284 Thought 

themselves and the time which separates them may be 
varied in all sorts of ways ; and the mental processes 
involved in the comparison vary accordingly. Here 
we shall mention only two points, which bear upon the 
course of thought at large. 

It is a tradition in psychology that the comparison 
of present with past experience implies the arousal of 
an image; we revive or reproduce the old, and then set 
its mental picture alongside the new. We have met 
a like tradition before, in our account of recognition and 
of expectation (pp. 184, 273). Nothing, however, can 
be more certain than that the image is unnecessary; 
comparison may be direct, the immediate outcome of a deter- 
mination; and if it is indirect, the processes involved need 
not be images. Suppose, for instance, that you are 
comparing two tones, sounded in succession, and that 
you are to report upon their pitch ; you are to say 
whether the second tone is higher or lower than the first, 
or of the same pitch. In very many cases, the second 
tone will evoke, at once and automatically, the report 
■ higher,' ' lower,' or ' same ' ; you find yourself utter- 
ing the word, without further experience of any kind; 
the whole procedure closes in on itself, very much as 
the impulse does in the motor reaction (p. 241). In 
many cases, again, the comparison will be indirect, 
but the intervening processes are sensations; strains 
appear in chest or throat, in forehead or scalp ; the ob- 
servers report a ' tightening ' which means ' higher,' 
and a ' relaxing ' or ' slackening ' which means that the 
second tone is lower. We may suppose that these 
kin aesthetic processes are empathic; for in playing or 



§ 67. Comparison and Discrimination 285 

singing or listening to music we are likely to strain and 
hold the breath for high-pitched passages, and to relax 
and settle down for the low. Lastly, some imaginal 
complex may intervene ; but even so it need not be audi- 
tory; the observer may picture a printed score or the 
piano keyboard, or may feel himself striking a note 
which is a semitone above or below another. The 
auditory image plays a part in the comparison only when 
the experiment is novel, when the second tone fails to 
touch off a response, or when there is a conflict of im- 
pulses to report ; in other words, only when the observer 
is hesitant and uncertain; otherwise, it either fails to 
appear, or appears and is disregarded. 

That is the first point : the second is that compari- 
son is often complete — paradoxical as the statement 
may appear — before the second of the paired stimuli has 
been presented; we are ready with our answer before 
the full question has been put. If, for instance, we are 
comparing the intensities of successive tones, and if the 
first tone strikes us as unusually loud, or as ridiculously 
faint, then we are prepared to declare the second tone 
' weaker ' or ' stronger ' before we have actually heard 
it. We receive from the first tone an absolute impres- 
sion of loudness or f aintness ; and this impression — 
which, as we saw on p. 125, is our nearest approach to 
an intensive perception — suffices of itself to determine 
our report. Logically, we may be said to ' compare ' 
the very loud or very faint tone with a tone of average 
intensity; psychologically, there is no comparison at 
all, but a direct response to the absolute impression made 
by the first term of the stimulus-pair. 



286 Thought 

It need hardly be said that these paragraphs do not 
offer, even in outline sketch, a psychology of comparison ; 
they are not meant to ; for here again the time is not 
ripe for full discussion. They should be enough, how- 
ever, to drive home the lesson which the author intends : 
that the course of thought, whether we take the pattern as a 
whole or consider separate aspects of it, is full of short cuts 
and condensations. It is probably as impossible to 
unravel the psychology of thought, in every detail and 
to its first beginnings, as it is to unravel the psychology 
of perception. For our thinking is subject, not only 
to the inherited tendencies of the nervous system, but 
also to the stereotyped thought of our social surround- 
ings ; we are bred up in an atmosphere of meaning, and 
we hear words before we can speak them. If men do 
not use language, as Voltaire cynically said they do, to 
conceal their own thoughts, at least their facility of 
speech makes the psychology of thought almost insuper- 
ably difficult to their children. 



Questions and Exercises 287 

Questions and Exercises 

(1) We found, in the last chapter, that selective action 
does not follow directly upon impulsive action, but that 
there is between the two a stage of ' trial and error.' Can 
you instance any form of thought (from your own experience, 
or from drama or fiction) which corresponds with the stage 
of trial and error in action? 

(2) Can you suggest the circumstances under which an 
' intention to communicate ' might naturally arise ? Your 
answer must be speculative ; but it must also be scientifically 
reasonable ! 

(3) How is articulate speech superior to gesture? Write 
fully ; do not be satisfied with your first answer. 

(4) Illustrate in detail, from your answers to previous 
questions in this book, the advantages and disadvantages 
of language as the vehicle of scientific description. 

(5) In this chapter we have seen that speech replaces 
gesture; in § 51, we spoke of the conservatism of gesture, 
and said that the speech-metaphor might lapse while the 
gesture persisted. Is there any contradiction? 

(6) It is said that the letters of the alphabet were originally 
hieroglyphics, that is, pictures of actual objects in the 
external world, and that they have only by very slow degrees 
become sound-symbols. Suppose this to be true: can you 
outline the course of change, in psychological terms? 

(7) Try, as occasion offers, to analyse (a) the mental 
attitude of questioning, and (b) the feeling of validity; 
keep your notes by you, and try again and again. Com- 
pare your own results with those obtained by your fellow- 
students. 

(8) James writes that " we ought to say a feeling of and, 
a feeling of if, a feeling of but, and a feeling of by, quite as 
readily as we say a feeling of blue or a feeling of cold " (Prin- 
ciples of Psychology, i., 1890, 245 f.) : that is to say, we ought 
to speak of ' sensations of relation,' just as we speak of 



288 Thought 

' sensations of sight.' Do you agree? Answer the question, 
first, in general terms, from the point of view of a scientific 
psychology; and again in the concrete, after you have 
observed the mental processes that come with an emphatic 
but or if. 

(9) An examiner sets questions which shall test his 
students' knowledge; he also sets questions in order to dis- 
cover whether they have thought for themselves. How 
can he tell? 

(10) How is it that one can carry a complicated sentence to 
a smooth grammatical conclusion, without knowing before- 
hand what words and what form of sentence one is going to 
employ ? 

(n) Arrange an experiment on comparison with simul- 
taneously presented stimuli ; an experiment, for instance, on 
the discrimination of hues or of lengths of lines. Outline 
a psychology of this mode of comparison. Is the comparison 
always direct? Is there any evidence of absolute impres- 
sion? 

(12) On p. 259 you were asked to distinguish various 
types of decision ; and some of them, as you no doubt found, 
were not decisions in the proper psychological sense. Can 
you, in the same way, distinguish types of conclusion, and 
show that some of them (even after secondary attention 
has been at work) are not, in the proper psychological sense, 
judgements? 

References 

W. James, Principles of Psychology, i., 1890, chs. ix., xii., 
xiii. ; ii., ch. xxii. ; W. Wundt, Lectures on Human and 
Animal Psychology, 1896, Lects. xxi., xxiv. ; Outlines of 
Psychology, 1907, § 17 ; T. Ribot, The Evolution of General 
Ideas, 1899; W. B. Pillsbury, The Psychology of Reasoning, 
1910; E. B. Titchener, Experimental Psychology of the 
Thought-processes, 1909; Text-book of Psychology, 19 10, 



References 289 

505 fif. ; J. Ward, art. Psychology, in Encyclopaedia Britan- 
nica, xxii., 191 1, 589 ff. 

Special references are : G. Berkeley, A Treatise concerning 
the Principles of Human Knowledge, 17 10, Introd. (A. C. 
Fraser, Selections from Berkeley, 1884, 16, 18, 22) ; T. H. 
Huxley, Hume, 1881, 96 f. ; E. B. Tylor, Anthropology, 1881, 
chs. iv., v. 



CHAPTER XI 

Sentiment 

Assis sur un banc de Mail, M. l'abbe Lantaigne, superieur du grand 
seminaire, et M. Bergeret, maitre de conferences a. la Faculte des lettres, 
conversaient, selon leur coutume d'ete. lis etaient sur toutes choses 
d'un sentiment contraire ; jamais deux hommes ne furent plus differents 
d'esprit et de caractere. Mais seuls dans la ville ils s'interessaient aux 
idees generates. Cette sympathie les reunissait. — Anatole France 

§ 68. The Nature of Sentiment. — In ordinary speech, 
the word ' sentiment,' like the word ' feeling,' is used 
in many different senses; and, unlike 'feeling,' it has 
not settled down to a single meaning within psychology. 
We must therefore define it arbitrarily ; and we shall 
reserve it, in this book, to denote the feeling-complex 
which gathers about a judgement or an imaginative con- 
struction. In emotion, we are brought face to face with 
an incident or situation which overwhelms us, takes 
possession of us ; the emotion arises in the state of 
primary attention. A very strong and complex feeling 
is formed, and is rendered still stronger and still more 
complex by the organic sensations that come with our 
bodily attitude towards the situation (p. 216). In 
sentiment, we are also brought face to face with an 
incident or situation ; but this is of a kind that demands 
secondary attention, effortful and divisive attention, 
now to one phase or feature and now to another. We 
take possession of it, so to speak, in place of its taking 
possession of us. Otherwise, the sentiment resembles 

290 



§ 68. The Nature of Sentiment 291 

the emotion; a complex feeling is formed, and is rein- 
forced by organic sensations ; the bodily expression of 
sentiment is of the same kind as that of emotion. Sup- 
pose, for instance, that we sit down to a book by a new 
author. If we are actively and not passively interested ; 
if we read critically, in the light of previous study and 
present knowledge ; if we judge as we read ; then our 
felt realisation of the aptness, fitness, rightness of the 
author's style is a sentiment. Or suppose that we are 
looking at a painting by a great master. If we can 
see how form and colour flowed straight out of the brush ; 
if we can appreciate this fluency as the reward of toil 
upon toil, essay after essay; if our own critical vision 
can seize the painter's idea, and note the individuality 
with which that idea was conceived and is now expressed ; 
then our felt realisation of the beauty of the painting is, 
again, a sentiment. These are examples offered from 
the standpoint of the critic ; and such examples come 
naturally to mind, since criticism is both commoner and 
more articulate than creative art ; but it need hardly 
be said that the artist too, as his construction proceeds, 
will have the same sort of experience, and probably in 
more intensive form. 

The sentiment thus stands upon a higher level of mental 
development than the emotion; there is no other differ- 
ence. And it follows from what we have said of thought 
(p. 262) that the sentiment is a rare experience. Just as 
there are many apparent judgements that are not 
really thought at all, so there are many apparent senti- 
ments that are based upon borrowed judgements, and 
have never been anything more than feeling-attitudes, 



292 Sentiment 

more or less explicit ; and just as secondary lapses into 
derived primary attention, so will a true sentiment lapse, 
with time and repetition, into a feeling-attitude. Hence, 
in describing and identifying the sentiments, we must 
be constantly on guard against confusing them with 
attitudes based on ready-made judgements, and with 
attitudes based upon what were once true judgements 
but are now matters of habitual acceptance. Our 
' sentiment ' of honour, for example, may never have 
cost us a moment's attention. A definition of honour 
has come to us, by tradition and precept, and we have 
accepted it without thought ; situations which involve 
honour take possession of us, as emotive situations do, 
and we reply by the feeling-attitude. Or again, our 
' sentiment ' of beauty in pictorial art may once have 
been a real sentiment ; we may have laboriously studied 
art-canons, have studiously dissected art-forms by 
secondary attention, have steeped ourselves in appre- 
ciation and criticism. Now, after all this labour, we 
have nothing but an attitude to a new picture ; we 
1 instinctively ' approve or disapprove of a work of art, 
without making any positive effort to analyse it. To 
talk, in these cases, about a moral or an aesthetic senti- 
ment would be psychologically wrong ; we experience 
simply two feeling-attitudes. 

If, then, psychology were concerned simply with the 
part played in the mental life by the sentiments proper, 
the subject might be dismissed in a few words; the 
sentiments would figure in a text-book of psychology very 
much as the ' rare earths ' figure in an elementary chem- 
istry. We cannot thus dismiss them, and for two reasons. 



§ 69. The Variety of Feeling- Attitude 293 

In the first place, the experience of a true sentiment, 
in any one of the great departments in which senti- 
ments may appear, — we shall mention them presently, 
— leaves behind it a remarkably varied train of feeling- 
attitudes; and these attitudes are thenceforward a per- 
manent possession; we give illustrations in § 69. 
Secondly, the experience of a sentiment, and the possession 
of the consequent variety of attitudes, enable one empathi- 
cally to realise the attitudes and responses of those who, in 
other departments, have reached the same mental level. Not 
only is there a ' freemasonry among artists ' ; there is 
a freemasonry among all men and women who have at 
any time really judged or constructed ; so that the radi- 
cal reformer and the conservative reactionary, the 
austere moralist and the disciple of art for art's sake, 
feel at home with each other, can get to close quarters 
with each other; their ideas and beliefs may differ as 
the east differs from the west, but — if they have hon- 
estly wrestled with their problem — there is a felt psy- 
chological community between them. The great writer 
who goes by the name of Anatole France has brought 
out this truth, in his own ironical way, in the quotation 
which heads the chapter. So that individually and 
socially the sentiments demand consideration; the 
attitudes which derive from them enrich and diversify 
individual experience, and establish a social bond of 
empathic understanding among those who would else 
be psychological strangers. 

§ 69. The Variety of Feeling- Attitude. — Let us take 
an elementary example of the variety of attitudes which 



294 Sentiment 

follows in the wake of a sentiment. The sentiment 
which we select is one of those most widely attained : 
the sentiment of fitness of literary style. If, now, you 
read Lafcadio Hearn's Japan, — as who has not? — 
you cannot fail to notice the differences of paragraphing. 
There are paragraphs which follow one another in the 
ordinary way, without break. There are paragraphs 
separated by a blank space, the width of a line of print. 
There are paragraphs that begin with a dash. There 
are paragraphs separated by a line or triangle of asterisks. 
There are paragraphs which end with a series of periods. 
And these modes of connective separation, as we may be 
allowed to call them, are themselves variously combined. 
Hearn has tried by such rather clumsy means to 
arouse in his reader the specific feeling-attitude in which 
he wrote. He tries to do the same thing, on a more 
minute scale, by his system of punctuation; and the 
net outward result is an unpleasant spottiness of page. 
Let us, however, keep to the internal ; and let us con- 
sider only the paragraphing. If you pause to think of 
it, the paragraph-feeling itself is a somewhat subtle 
thing; a properly rounded paragraph gives you a feel- 
ing of temporary completeness, while yet it invites you 
to look ahead, leaves you in a certain suspense; a 
poorly finished paragraph gives you the same feeling 
of disappointment, of being ' taken in,' that you get 
from a weak ending to a stanza, or from a musical pro- 
gression that fails to hold its tone-colour. The para- 
graph that is set off from what follows by a blank line 
rouses a feeling of greater completeness ; you are to 
stop and take breath, to let your thought play back- 



§ 69- The Variety of Feeling- Attitude 295 

ward a little before you go on ; still you are to look for- 
ward. The paragraph that begins with a dash opens up 
the subject from a new angle ; you are to hold what 
you have read, but you are now to see it in a fresh light ; 
the feeling is that of a pleasurable curiosity, with the 
prospect of reference forth and back. The paragraphs 
with asterisks between them are like different roads 
of survey in a country that you are touring ; each one 
is complete in itself, but you are to remember them all 
for a future synthesis ; at the moment you have a sense 
of relief, but this is mixed with a somewhat exciting 
responsibility; the author expects you to be ready for 
him when he comes to summarising. Lastly, the train 
of periods means a trail of feeling ; the device, which is 
far more freely used by French than by English writers, 
invites you to let your thought play ahead a little, in 
the context of the feeling aroused by the paragraph, 
before you go on. Take the description of the local 
Shinto festival : "By immemorial custom the upper 
stories of all the dwellings had been tightly closed : woe 
to the Peeping Tom who should be detected, on such a 
day, in the impious act of looking down upon the god! 
..." Elementary enough, in all conscience ; and need- 
lessly emphasised by the italics ; and yet tremendously 
effective; one's ideas trail off, in a context of feeling, 
from the seacoast village of Japan to the inland English 
town, from outraged godhead to the desecration of 
humanity; not sentimentally, or one has missed the 
writer's intention, but in a continuous train of attitudes 
which derive from literary sentiment. It is a pity, 
psychologically, that ' sentimental ' is the adjective of 



296 Sentiment 

' sentimentality ' ; for sentimentality is at the opposite 
pole to sentiment, as sentiment is here used; but we 
cannot help the twists of language. 

No doubt, a greater artist than Hearn would have 
printed his pages in the conventional way, and would 
still have made his appeal, without signposts, to the 
expert reader. Yet we may be grateful to him for a 
psychological object-lesson; he has given outward 
expression to a set of attitudes that we should otherwise 
have been obliged to seek and identify for ourselves. 
All the same, the attitudes would have been there, as 
certainly and definitely as if they had been indicated ; 
and we could have found them, if we had ever experi- 
enced the sentiment of literary fitness. You see what 
enrichment of the life of feeling such a sentiment breeds, 
and you see how helpless we should be without it. The 
proverbs say de gustibus non est disputandum, and quot 
homines tot sententice, as if taste and opinion were matters 
of the merest chance. They are never that, however 
far they may lie below the level of sentiment and judge- 
ment; for there are solid uniformities of sense-feeling, 
and there is in every society a basal community of 
ideas ; while, upon the higher level, they are as sure and 
as uniform as individual differences of talent and tem- 
perament allow. They are far more sure and far more 
uniform than the outsider imagines; technical discus- 
sion and technical appreciation have always a reasoned 
foundation of agreement. Competent critics may de- 
bate whether Whistler's picture of his Mother or that of 
Miss Alexander is the greater portrait ; but think how 
much must be agreed upon before the debate can begin ! 



§ 7°- The Forms of Sentiment 297 

§ 70. The Forms of Sentiment. — Emotions go in 
pairs; an emotion is either joy or sorrow, either hope 
or fear ; there is no midway emotion that is something 
between the two, but is neither the one nor the other. 
The sense-feelings, too, go in pairs; a feeling is either 
exciting or subduing, for instance, and cannot be any- 
thing between. When, however, the situation that 
arouses feeling is met by us in the state of secondary 
attention, then there is a third possibility; and the 
sentiments, in fact, run in threes. Here is a theory : is it 
true or false ? If we judge it true, we have the sentiment 
of belief; if we judge it false, the sentiment of disbelief. 
But we need not come to a final judgement ; facts a, b, 
c, we will suppose, tell for the theory, and facts x, y, z tell 
against it ; we oscillate, uncertainly, between the two 
predicates ' true ' and ' false ' ; and the result is the 
suspensive sentiment of doubt. Language is an unsafe 
guide in these matters ; partly because the same term 
may stand both for sentiment and for feeling-attitude, 
but partly also because the sentiments, being less com- 
mon than emotions, have not always received specific 
names. In principle, nevertheless, there is in every 
case a third sentiment, corresponding with oscillation 
of judgement, between the two extremes. 

The three just mentioned, belief -doubt-disbelief, 
belong to the class of intellectual sentiments. An at- 
tempt has been made to examine them under experimental 
conditions; with the result that they prove to be of 
rare occurrence ; that they are characterised in different 
minds — as might perhaps be expected, from the com- 
plexity of the situation — by different complexes, by 



298 Sentiment 

the kinaesthesis of bodily attitude, by internal speech, 
by the interplay of visual imagery; and that they are 
ordinarily replaced by the feeling-attitudes of certainty 
and uncertainty. The mental patterns of belief and 
disbelief turn out to be the same; and this result is 
psychologically reasonable; for the positive and nega- 
tive of the terms are logical, an affair of meaning ; so far 
as experience goes, disbelief is as positive as belief. 
Hence it is natural that both of them should be repre- 
sented in feeling-attitude by the same ' certainty.' 
Another group of intellectual sentiments, less often 
named, but familiar to everyone who has set to work 
seriously to master a new writer or a new subject, con- 
sists of agreement, obscurity and contradiction. These 
have not, to the author's knowledge, been subjected to 
analysis ; indeed, the present paragraphs can do little 
more than catalogue a few of the more obvious senti- 
ments ; the experiences are difficult to induce, and their 
detailed study is yet to come. 

In the sphere of the moral or social sentiments, we 
have such opposites as trust-distrust, honour-dishonour, 
justice-injustice. There is always a suspensive senti- 
ment, corresponding with oscillation of judgement, 
though its name can be made only approximative ; we 
may, perhaps, speak of trust-trial-distrust, honour-am- 
biguity-dishonour, justice-equivocalness-injustice ; think 
yourself into concrete situations, and you will get the 
meaning of the terms ! Social situations are, however, 
of great practical importance; and we usually meet 
them, not by a sentiment, but by some emotion based 
upon instinctive tendencies; vanity, shame, pride, 



§ 7°- The Forms of Sentiment 299 

sympathy are emotions of this sort. The same thing 
holds of religious situations. Triads like faith-per- 
plexity-denial, communion-insecurity-estrangement point 
to the state of secondary attention ; but in general the 
religious situation sets up an emotion. 

We come, lastly, to the aesthetic sentiments. These 
are confused, by the majority of civilised mankind, with 
the emotions aroused by the subject of the work of art ; 
whereas this subject is really of very minor importance ; 
of no importance at all, if it is dictated by tradition 
and environment ; and of secondary importance, only 
as it is chosen by the artist, from a number of possible 
subjects, because it allows the expression of personality 
or offers a test of difficulties overcome. What do you 
suppose Michael Angelo was trying to do when he painted 
the Last Judgement, or Titian when he painted the En- 
tombment of Christ? The aesthetic sentiments are, in 
reality, those of success-bafflement-failure, ease-confu- 
sion-difficulty, approbation-criticism-condemnation, and 
the like. When Ruskin said " Everything that Velas- 
quez does may be taken as absolutely right by the stu- 
dent," the unmeasured approbation expresses a true 
aesthetic sentiment ; Ruskin had worked over Velasquez. 
When a recent writer on art directs us, in Millet's 
Gleaners, to " these forms bowed down by labour, 
these coarse habiliments, these work-hardened hands," 
he is outside the sphere of aesthetics altogether, and his 
appeal lies — at the best — to a social emotion. 

These groups of sentiments, the intellectual, the moral 
or social, the religious and the cesthetic, are usually re- 
garded as distinct and diferent. It is true that they are 



300 . Sentiment 

called forth by different kinds of situation. We must 
remember, however, that there are only two kinds of 
mental pattern involved : the thought-pattern and the 
pattern of constructive imagination ; and we have seen 
that these are themselves broadly similar. It is not 
likely, therefore, that the sentiments, or the feeling- 
attitudes that derive from them, differ in anything but 
inessentials from group to group ; M. Bergeret and M. 
l'abbe Lantaigne felt in very much the same way. The 
variety of the feeling-attitudes is, indeed, surprisingly 
large ; the point here is that this variety is essentially 
the same, whether one be sage or saint, artist or moralist. 

§ 71. The Situations and Their Appeal. — If we wish 
to enquire into the nature of the situations which arouse 
a sentiment, two^ courses are open to us. We may under- 
take a study of origins ; we may trace the history of 
primitive science and primitive art, and so on; and 
we may then try to generalise, both as regards the cir- 
cumstances which called forth the scientific or artistic 
response, and as regards the appeal that such circum- 
stances make to the human organism. Or we may turn 
our attention to acknowledged masterpieces, and try 
in like manner to ' get behind ' them ; trusting in this 
event rather to the typical than to the general. Both 
courses have been followed, and followed assiduously; 
but the outcome is still uncertain. 

The tendency has been to refer a group of sentiments 
to some single root in human nature. That is only natural ; 
for it is always satisfactory to simplify ; and when once 
the investigator has hit upon what he takes to be the 



§ 7 1- The Situations and Their Appeal 301 

primule or germ of later development, he is prepared 
to accept whatever makes for his theory and to reject 
whatever tells against it (p. 98). Yet we must remind 
ourselves that man's instinctive tendencies are not car- 
ried intact throughout his history ; man reasons, as we 
said (p. 210), on the basis of fragments of instinctive 
tendency, disjoined from their original connections and 
recombined to suit the occasion. We may, for instance, 
refer the intellectual sentiments to a native curiosity (p. 205) ; 
but what is curiosity? A very mixed medley of in- 
stinctive responses : Professor Thorndike includes under 
it " attention to novel objects and human behaviour, 
cautious approach, reaching and grasping, the food- 
trying reactions of putting in the mouth, tasting and 
biting, general exploration with the eyes and manipula- 
tion with the hands," as well as " the love of sensory 
life for its own sake." Again, we may refer the moral and 
social sentiments to a native sympathy or empathy ; but 
here, also, we should find, in the concrete, a mixed medley 
of particular responses. These references are, never- 
theless, fairly satisfactory. What shall we say of reli- 
gion and art ? 

There seems to be no original artistic tendency or art- 
instinct. In primitive times, the body was decorated 
with a view to attracting notice, and especially to attract- 
ing a mate. Then, by slow degrees, decoration travelled 
from person to surroundings : first, from the body to the 
clothes, and then again from clothes to house. But 
as the primitive house is a rude structure, and its owner 
poor, not much can be done by way of individual house- 
adornment; and so we find the members of a tribe 



302 Sentiment 

clubbing together, so to speak, to decorate the common 
house, the temple. ^Esthetics now enters into the ser- 
vice of religion. 

Again : as the tribes settled down to agricultural pur- 
suits, man became a labourer and learned to work ; 
systematic and regular work grew to be a necessity. 
But work means play ; if we labour, we must also have 
recreation. How, then, shall grown-up people play? 
They have lost their interest in childish games. Ms- 
thetics comes to the rescue ; art is the play, the proper 
recreation, of grown-up workers ; we speak, and speak 
rightly, of Shakespeare's ' plays ' and of ' playing ' the 
violin. ^Esthetics has now lost its distinctively religious 
meaning, and has been turned to secular purposes. 

In no less than three ways, therefore, has aesthetics 
proved itself to be of practical importance. It has been 
useful in courtship ; it has been useful as enhancing the 
impressiveness of religious ceremonies ; it is still emi- 
nently useful as the play of adults . Curiosity and empathy 
have both entered into it; curiosity in the manipulation 
of shells and feathers, of brush and cutting edge ; em- 
pathy in the affairs of courtship and worship. Further 
than this we can hardly go. The psychological essence 
of tragedy, in Hamlet or Antigone, and the psychological 
essence of comedy, in Dogberry and Verges, still escape 
us ; there are many theories, but no one of them is 
convincing. 

It seems, also, that there is no specific religious ten- 
dency or instinct. Religion has been ascribed to fear, 
to an instinct of dependence, to an instinctive recogni- 
tion of the infinite, and so on ; but modern writers agree 



§ ji. The Situations and Their Appeal 303 

that it cannot derive from a single source. " Reli- 
gion," says Professor Leuba, " is rooted in instinctive 
impulses and in instincts, — in fear, acquisitiveness, 
pugnacity, curiosity, love, etc. But the relation that 
instinct bears to religion is no other than that obtaining 
between instinct and commerce or any complex social 
activity." Religion, like art, has a strong practical 
sanction ; the worshipper expects to control the forces 
of nature, and to secure the action of gods and spirits 
upon human minds and bodies ; while religion itself 
satisfies the desire for power and for social recognition, 
quickens intelligence, and regulates and unifies the 
community. We understand something of the growth 
of religious ideas, as we know something of the develop- 
ment of art ; but the contents of a religious system, and 
the products of artistic construction, do not take us far 
towards the explication of human tendencies. 

In a word, then, the problem which we have here 
formulated is too difficult for solution now or in the near 
future. We cannot ' get behind ' the masterpiece, the 
achievement of civilisation; the conditions are too 
complex. We cannot draw any certain conclusion 
from the study of origins; for primitive man, as we 
know him, is very like ourselves, both in convention 
and in reasoning ; Professor Boas finds no evidence that 
" hereditary mental faculty has been improved by civili- 
sation " ; the savage may be untutored, but he is as 
complicatedly human as the best of us. We can say, 
negatively, that neither the situations which are met by 
sentiment nor the tendencies to which these situations appeal 
are unique ; and that is, in itself, something gained. 



304 Sentiment 

No genuine problem is insoluble; and further work, 
partly along the older lines and partly perhaps by new 
methods which bear directly upon man's instinctive 
tendencies, will some day answer the questions raised 
in these paragraphs. 

§72. Mood, Passion, Temperament. — With lapse 
of secondary attention, the sentiments lapse, as we have 
seen, into feeling-attitudes. It appears, from ordinary 
observation, that they may also persist, in weakened 
form, as moods. Thus, the moods acquiescence-inde- 
cision-incredulity correspond with the sentiments belief- 
doubt-disbelief ; and we speak of a critical humour, a 
religious frame of mind, and so on. It is doubtful 
whether the sentiments rise to the intensity of passion ; 
we speak, it is true, of a passionate humility, of a pas- 
sion of disapprobation or of renunciation ; but it is prob- 
able that these experiences are emotive, singly and not 
multiply determined. 

A detailed classification of the temperaments would 
include forms characterised by special susceptibility 
to sentiment and by type of response, intellectual, artis- 
tic, and so forth. Meantime, the crude fourfold arrange- 
ment of p. 227 seems to cover the cases: the ascetic 
temperament, for instance, falls under the melancholic, 
the critical under the phlegmatic, the ' artistic ' of cur- 
rent speech under the choleric or sanguine. 



Questions and Exercises 305 

Questions and Exercises 

(1) What do you mean by ' style '? Do not write com- 
monplace ; think the question out, and answer it in psy- 
chological terms. 

(2) Have some argumentative passage read aloud to you. 
Notice how the intellectual feeling-attitudes rise and dis- 
appear, as the argument proceeds. Differentiate them, and 
try to give them names ; mark the sentences which call them 
forth ; try to determine if their nature and arousal correspond 
with the writer's intention. 

(3) What modes of feeling-response may be aroused by 
music ? Illustrate, if possible, by actual examples. 

(4) Are there any movements that characteristically ex- 
press certain sentiments, as clenching the fist (for instance) ex- 
presses anger? 

(5) Matthew Arnold defined poetry as " a criticism of life " 
(look up the passage, in the Preface to Poems of Wordsworth, 
and be sure that you understand it !). Does this definition 
suggest any further field of usefulness for aesthetics? May 
aesthetics properly be extended to cover it? 

(6) How does ' curiosity ' differ from ' inquisitiveness ' ? 

(7) Can you recall any characters, in literature or fiction, 
who might stand as embodiments of some social or religious 
sentiment ? 

(8) Two traditional explanations of the ludicrous are 
(a) the theory of degradation : that when we laugh we are 
realising our own superiority, and (b) the theory of incon- 
gruity : that the comic situation always involves a nullifying 
of expectation. What criticisms can you offer? 

(9) What sort of temperament are we thinking of when we 
agree to call Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goldsmith, Sterne, 
Lamb, Dickens and George Eliot ' humorists '? 

(10) Aristotle lays it down that tragedy " accomplishes 
by pity and fear the purgation of such emotions." Can 
you read a positive and definite meaning into this statement ? 



306 Sentiment 

Can you rephrase it, in terms of our psychology of sentiment? 
Is it then adequate? 

(n) How do we know that a greater artist than Hearn 
would have printed his pages in the conventional way? 
What means has an author, who does print in the conven- 
tional way, of emphasising the points at which he wishes 
feeling-attitudes to arise? 

(12) You should analyse some sentiments at first hand. 
Ask a friend to write out a number of descriptions, statements, 
questions, that have evoked in his own experience the senti- 
ments (say) of belief and doubt, or of honour and ambiguity. 
Let him arrange them in pairs : belief-doubt, honour-ambi- 
guity. Then take a pair, and read the two statements in 
quick succession. You will be surprised to find how matter- 
of-course and indifferent your attitude is; but presently 
some member of a pair will grip you, start you thinking ; and 
you will then have the opportunity to observe. Write out 
(or better, dictate) a full report. 

References 

J. Sully, The Human Mind, ii., 1892, ch. xvi. ; An Essay on 
Laughter, 1902, ch. v. ; W. Wundt, Lectures on Human 
and Animal Psychology, 1896, Lect. xxv., §4; Ethics, i., 
1897, ch. iii. ; T. Ribot, The Psychology of the Emotions, 
1897, chs. vi. ff. ; E. B. Titchener, Text-book of Psychology, 
1910, 500 ff. ; E. L. Thorndike, The Original Nature of Man, 
1913,41, 102 f., 140 f. 

Special References : F. Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man, 
191 1 ; J. H. Leuba, A Psychological Study of Religion, 191 2 ; 
L. Hearn, Japan, An Attempt at Interpretation, 1904; 
A. C. Haddon, Evolution in Art, 1895 ; G. Santayana, The 
Sense of Beauty, 1896 ; G. Moore, Modern Painting, 1898. 



CHAPTER XII 

Self and Consciousness 

The savage commonly fancies that the link between a name and the 
person denominated by it is a real and substantial bond. In fact, 
primitive man regards his name as a vital portion of himself, and takes 
care of it accordingly. — Sir James Frazer 

§ 73. The Concept of Self. — We said on p. 9 that 
the word mind is used by the psychologist as an inclusive 
name for all the phenomena of the psychological world, 
that is to say, of the world with man left in. We then 
found, on p. 10, that the man left in reduces to a func- 
tional nervous system. This means, of course, that 
there are as many psychological worlds as there are 
separate nervous systems ; so that the psychological 
world, which the psychologist tries to describe, is in 
reality an average or generalised world ; though the 
observations upon which his descriptions rest are always 
made upon this or that particular world. The same 
thing holds of any science. A boy picks up a bit of 
jagged stone, and with a jerk of his wrist flips it across 
the road. No physicist could tell you the exact course 
described by that stone, and no physicist wants to. 
Physics deals with the ideal course of ideal projectiles 
hurled under fixed conditions ; the boy and the jerk 
and the jagged stone are all generalised away into some 
mathematically smooth trajectory. The observations 

307 



308 Self and Consciousness 

of physics, on the other hand, are made by men working 
under conditions that are not ideal, and using instru- 
ments that differ from the wrist and the stone only in 
degree, not in kind ; the smooth curve is derived 'from 
data all of which have their margin of empirical error. 

Psychology, however, just because it has to do with 
a world in which man himself remains, is in a different 
case from the physical sciences ; it has to take account 
of the self. The concept of self is not solely psychological; 
it is a common-sense concept ; and like all the construc- 
tions of common sense it has three sides, philosophical, 
practical, and scientific. It is philosophical, in so far 
as it involves an attempt to explain or to rationalise 
the facts of observation ; and it evidently does that ; 
the notion of self is a way of explaining the continuity 
of memory and of conduct ; I remember my past because 
I am I, and I behave in this way or that because it is 
' like me ' to do so. The concept is also practical; 
common sense rates a self as gifted or energetic or lazy 
of improvident ; it is always valuing or estimating some 
Him or Her, some You or Me. It is further scientific, 
that is, psychological ; for the self thus rated is some 
particular combination of talent, temperament and 
character, and the continuity which the self explains 
is some particular mental constitution, intellectual, 
emotive, active ; one cannot at all define the ' person ' 
or ' individual ' of common sense without using psy- 
chological terms. So that psychology, if only in self- 
defence, must have its say in the matter, and must re- 
cast the self from its own point of view. 

The recasting is not difficult. A self, in the psychologi- 



§ 73- The Concept of Self 309 

cal sense, is one of the particular psychological worlds. 
It is not mind, but a mind, the mental phenomena corre- 
lated with a particular nervous system, and arranged 
and determined in accordance with the tendencies of 
that system. We have made no mention of it hitherto, 
in this book, because our main business has been with 
general psychology, and we have had no need of it. 
Psychology, however, does not confine itself to the 
generalised world : and that is how it comes to be in dif- 
ferent case from the physical sciences, and takes account, 
not only in self-defence, of the concept of self. If you 
go back to pp. 31 f ., you will note that there is a differen- 
tial psychology, a psychology of individual differences, as 
well as a general psychology. The variation of mental 
processes from observer to observer, and the limits and 
manner of this variation, are indeed just as much matter 
of observable fact, and therefore just as proper a sub- 
ject for scientific enquiry, as their uniformity; and as 
the incidents of a man's career may be set forth objec- 
tively, without praise or blame, in a biography, so may 
his psychological self, his mental processes in correlation 
with his nervous system, be set forth in a psychography. 
We ourselves, although we have been occupied with 
general psychology, and have for the most part spoken 
of ' practised observers ' as a physicist might speak of 
' a sensitive galvanometer,' without going into par- 
ticulars, — we ourselves have, nevertheless, found fre- 
quent occasion to mention individual differences. The 
facts that we have thus touched upon incidentally are 
worked up, systematically, by differential psychology. 
The concept of self is, however, a common-sense con- 



310 Self and Consciousness 

cept; it has, as we have seen, its practical side; and 
you will understand, therefore, that the differential study 
of selves has a high practical importance. Such a study 
is not rigorously or exclusively psychological. But 
since certain ' mental traits,' and certain combinations 
of them, may render a man fit or unfit for a proposed 
business or profession, it is important to know in what 
degree these traits are present ; and here the psycholo- 
gist is of assistance ; he has helped to devise ' mental 
tests ' which serve to identify and measure them. It is 
also especially important to know what traits are likely 
to be found together, and in what degree. This prob- 
lem has been vigorously attacked, of recent years, on 
the side of intellect ; and while the details belong to a 
chapter in practical psychology (p. 33) which we can- 
not here open, there is one result, at any rate, which 
should find a place in a scientific text-book. There 
seems to be no doubt that the individual nervous system 
possesses, over and above its special habits, susceptibilities, 
tendencies, and activities, a 'characteristic manner of func- 
tioning at large; so that a common or general factor 
enters into all the special intellectual responses that 
are called forth by particular situations. It is not easy 
to make this result clear to the reader, mainly because 
no one has as yet a clear idea of what the common or 
general factor is ; we have good evidence that it exists, 
but we can say very little more about it. Different 
names have been given to it : ' energy of attention,' 
' general ability,' ' intellective energy,' ' general in- 
telligence ' ; but they indicate the way in which it mani- 
fests itself, and not its own nature ; the best name for the 



§ 73- The Concept of Self 311 

present is the vague ' general common factor.' We do 
not know, either, upon what it depends : on blood-supply, 
perhaps, or on the arrangement of nervous structures, 
or on some individual ' quality ' of the nervous elements, 
or perhaps on something else that we cannot even guess 
at. What it does is to hold a man's intellectual traits 
together and to enter into the exhibition of them all; 
it is thus, from the psychological point of view, a sort of 
supreme determining tendency, guiding all mental pro- 
cesses whatsoever into the channels of intellectual selfhood. 
Whether there is a like general factor on the emotive 
side, and whether ' emotive energy ' is of the same kind 
as this ' intellective energy,' cannot be said. 

One further point ! We have Ijeen careful, in dealing 
with the common-sense concept of self, to distinguish 
its three aspects, philosophical, practical, scientific ; but 
we have drawn the limits of this self more strictly than 
everyday usage warrants; and we must now correct that 
error. Common sense, as we remarked on p. 2, is 
likely to confuse the Me with the Mine, and the Him 
with the His; the self is extended from personality to 
possessions. The confusion of Him and His is a natural 
consequence of the practical reference of the concept ; 
the easiest way to rate or estimate another person is to 
consider his property, his sphere of influence, his social 
prominence ; and these things, which are a part of the 
other person's value, thus become for us a part of him- 
self. The confusion of Me with Mine has a different 
origin. Intellect, temperament and character are based 
upon habits, and habits imply an habitual surroundings ; 
we are ' not ourselves ' when we leave our accustomed 



312 Self and Consciousness 

groove. No doubt, each of these sources of confusion 
intermingles with the other ; we are not concerned, how- 
ever, to follow them in detail. 

§ 74. The Persistence of the Self. — A full account 
of the self of common sense, in so far as this self calls 
for psychological treatment, belongs to social and not 
to general psychology; and the discussion therefore 
falls outside the scope of the present book. We must, 
however, say a word about that observed continuity of 
memory and conduct which the concept of self, on its 
philosophical side, professes to explain (p. 308) ; for 
the notion of the persistence of the self has had a marked 
influence, as we shall see in § 75, upon this chapter of 
general psychology. 

We are all of us disposed to take the persistence of the 
self for granted. Do I not now remember what I did and 
thought and felt when I was a small child ? and do I not 
now act in accordance with my character, as family and 
friends expect me to act ? Surely the thing is obvious : 
the organism is physically continuous, from infancy 
to old age ; a likeness of interest, of skill, of aptitudes, 
may be traced from childhood to manhood; and the 
discovery of the ' general common factor ' in the intel- 
lectual sphere only confirms what we knew before. The 
child becomes the adult, and the adult passes into senility, 
while the self remains the same, — growing and develop- 
ing and shrinking, to be sure, but essentially unchanged - 
throughout. That is the natural view; and for the most 
part it goes unchallenged. 

Let us see, however, whether it may not be questioned. 



§ 74- The Persistence of the Self 313 

We remember ; that is true ; but we also forget. The 
fact that certain past events are remembered tells more 
heavily, in common-sense thinking, than the fact that 
very many past events are forgotten, simply because 
it is human nature, as Bacon said, to give more weight 
to positive than to negative instances ; but science does 
not emphasize; science takes all the facts at the same 
level. The organism, again, is physically continuous, 
and ' the child is father of the man ' ; but who makes 
these observations? Not I, who am the continuous 
organism, but — in the first instance, at any rate — 
my fellow-men, those who are about me ; and my fellow- 
men clinch their observations by the bestowal upon 
me of a personal name. In primitive thought, the 
superstitions that connect the name with the personality 
are legion; and even to-day our own name is warmly 
intimate, a very factor of our self. This name, which 
forms part of us and holds us together all through life, 
comes nevertheless from the outside; we do not name 
ourselves ! Consider, further, the influence of language 
in general. It is clear that language, as it developed 
forms of speech in accordance with the common-sense 
notion of self, would powerfully reinforce that notion ; 
the words and phrases which at first expressed ideas 
would come, in time, to shape or suggest ideas. The 
common-sense view is thus accepted as natural; but 
there is no proof that it is correct. 

Suppose, then, that we openly challenge that view; 
what can we urge against it? We find, first of all, that 
language bears witness against itself. We say that a 
man is at times ' out of himself,' ' not himself,' ' beside 



314 Self and Consciousness 

himself ' ; we say that he forgets, surpasses, loses, dis- 
regards, neglects, discredits, contradicts himself; we 
say that he does himself injustice, that he cannot con- 
tain himself, and so forth. Our daily life bears witness 
to the same effect. A man may be suave and affable 
in business and a veritable bear at home ; and the man 
who sits as judge upon the bench, and plays a beginner's 
game upon the golf-course, and carries his little son pick- 
a-back to bed, is he the same self in all three situations ? 
There are changes of selfhood so abrupt that they remind 
us of the ' mutations ' of the biologists : religious con- 
version, loss of fortune, sudden elevation to a position 
of responsibility, disappointment in love, may make 
' another man ' of the man we knew. The seven ages, 
we might almost say, correspond with as many different 
selves ; it is a common remark that so-and-so has not 
fulfilled the promise of his youth, and that so-and-so 
is no longer the man he was. Pathology brings corrob- 
oration of the most striking kind; there are cases of 
dual or multiple personality, in which the same ' indi- 
vidual ' shows at different times very marked differences 
of intelligence, emotivity and conduct, differences so 
marked that the same organism appears as two or more 
distinct ' selves ' ; and these selves may be wholly sepa- 
rate in experience, so that one self has no knowledge or 
memory of the experiences of another. Here, there- 
fore, the abnormal is a more trenchant and clean-cut 
figure of the normal ; it is the normal carried, so to say, 
to its logical extreme. The judge delivering a charge 
does not think of his golf, and the irritated golf-player 
does not think of his charge ; but in the abnormal cases 



§ 75- The Self in Experience 315 

the division may be complete ; the one ' personality ' 
cannot think of the other. 

//, then, there are facts which look toward the persistence 
and continuity and stability of the self, there are also other 
facts which look toward impermanence and discontinuity 
and instability. Common sense has laid stress upon 
the positive evidence, and has enshrined in language 
the concept of a persistent and continuous self. This 
one-sided attitude, as we are now to see, has had its 
effect upon psychology. We have carried the present 
analysis only so far as was necessary for our own pur- 
poses; the full psychological discussion of the self of 
common sense belongs, as we said just now, to another 
branch of the science. 

§ 75. The Self in Experience. — So far, we have been 
discussing the psychological self as viewed, so to say, 
from the outside; we have found out what the word 
1 self ' means when it is used as a technical term like 
' mind ' or ' memory.' We have now to raise a different 
question, and to ask : How is myself represented in 
experience? There are very many occasions when the 
organism is, literally, thrown back on itself, when it 
meets a situation by a ^//-response; what mental 
processes are then involved? 

Self, in such cases, is a meaning; and, in principle, 
any mental process whatsoever may represent the self (or 
the phase or feature of the self that is called forth by 
the situation) if its context and determination carry the 
meaning of selfhood. We can hardly expect, however, 
that the context and determination will be explicit, 



316 Self and Consciousness 

a group of mental processes lying open to observation. 
For the meaning of self is very old in human history; 
and we learn from early childhood to speak a language 
in which it is already stereotyped, a language which 
bristles with / and my. We shall say more about lan- 
guage later. Meantime, you see that these are just the 
circumstances in which context and determination cease 
to be explicit, and reduce to a set or disposition of the 
nervous system (p. 120). Hence we must be satisfied 
to distinguish the forms in which the self-experience ap- 
pears, and to discover what particular mental processes, 
if any, fall characteristically into these self-forms. In 
other words, we enquire whether the self-meaning at- 
taches to a perception, or an idea, or a feeling, and so 
on down the list ; and we enquire also whether the self- 
perception or self-idea, or whatever the form may be, 
is characteristically visual or auditory or kinesthetic, 
and so on. In principle, remember, any form and any 
kind of process may represent the self, provided that the 
self-context and the self-determination are somehow 
there; we are now to gather observations, and to see 
what forms and what processes do, in fact, represent the 
self in our experience. 

Let us begin, however, by clearing out of the way cer- 
tain erroneous views that have appeared in psychology 
under the influence of common sense. Since the self 
of common sense is persistent, it has been argued that 
the self-experience must also be continuous; and psy- 
chologists, instead of going to the facts, have tried to find 
a basis in experience for this supposed continuity. // is 
sometimes said, for instance, that all mental processes 



§ 75- The Self in Experience 317 

alike are essentially self-processes ; because they are pro- 
cesses within a particular psychological world, because 
they belong to a self, therefore they have the character 
of selfness stamped upon them, and are known and 
experienced as processes-of-me. Does that view seem 
to you to be natural and reasonable? But consider 
the logic of it ; try a parallel argument ! We might as 
well say that because every native-born American be- 
longs to the group of American citizenship, therefore 
he is always aware that he is an American citizen ; or 
that because a certain man is wealthy, therefore he is 
always aware of his possessions. The fallacy is plain. 
It is sometimes said, again, that not all mental processes 
alike, but only the feeling-processes — sense-f eelings, emo- 
tions, sentiments, feeling-attitudes — have this charac- 
ter of selfness stamped upon them; the feelings are ' sub- 
jective ' experiences, and therefore being with them a 
reference to the self. The confusion is the same as 
that which we have just pointed out ; it is argued that, 
because all the feeling-processes are subjective (we 
need not enquire too curiously what that word means !) , 
therefore they must always mean the great subjective 
thing, the self; because a man is wealthy, therefore 
his wealth must always mean wealth to him; whereas 
it may, in various circumstances, mean an oil-painting 
or a steam-yacht. There is, however, another objec- 
tion. This view maintains that feeling-processes of 
some kind are always present in experience ; otherwise, 
indeed, they could not continuously refer to self; but 
observation shows that much of our experience is in- 
different, without tinge of feeling. It is sometimes 



318 Self and Consciousness 

said, once more, that the organic sensations are the peculiar 
self-experiences; they are always with us, forming a 
constant background of self, upon which our other and 
less stable experiences come and go. But it may be 
doubted whether these sensations are continuous; at 
any rate, they vary enormously in intensity and in their 
appeal to the attention. An experience of nausea is 
overwhelming; but need there be, in perfect health, 
any sensation whatever from heart-beat or breathing 
or digestion? Moreover, the logic of the position is 
still unsound. For a continuous experience is not neces- 
sarily the experience of something continuous; the 
fact that a man is all the while wealthy does not imply 
that he is continually realising his wealth. 

Having thus cleared the ground of bad argument, 
we may turn to the facts of observation. The question 
whether the self-experience is or is not continuous we 
leave, for the moment, entirely open. We ask, first : 
In what form or forms does this self -experience occur? 
and the answer is : In all possible forms. We may 
perceive ourself, as when we consult the glass to make 
sure that we look all right ; we may have an idea of 
ourself, in memory or imagination ; we may have a 
feeling of self, when we are lonely or vexed or ill at ease ; 
we may have a concept of self, as when we say emphati- 
cally in conversation ' I can't conceive of so-and-so ' ; 
we may have all sorts of self -attitudes , intellectual and 
emotive. Any form of mental connection may appear 
under a determination, or in a context, that gives it the 
meaning of self ; only be clear that it is always the de- 
termination or context, and not the form, which is re- 



§ 75- The Self in Experience 319 

sponsible for the selfness of the experience. We look 
in the glass, time and again, without having a self-per- 
ception ; and we are often lonely and uncomfortable, 
without having a self-feeling ; and we may say ' I ' 
a hundred times over, without having a self-concept. 
The setting is what gives the self-meaning to the ex- 
perience. 

We ask, secondly : Are there any particular mental 
processes that enter characteristically into the self -forms? 
and here the answer is less easy. We have seen that 
language has a large number of self-words ready made 
for us to use ; and we learn in our early years — some- 
times painfully enough — to connect the self with our 
body. So the perceived self tends to be a visual per- 
ception of the body, or of some part of it ; the felt self 
tends to be a blend of feeling with kin aesthetic and or- 
ganic sensation (these processes are, indeed, regular 
components of feelings and mental attitudes) ; while 
the conceived self is, of course, a matter of verbal per- 
ception and idea, — ordinarily, that is, a matter of 
auditory-kinaesthetic complexes. If, however, these 
processes are characteristic, we have no evidence that 
they are essential ; continued observation would prob- 
ably show that the self-meaning may attach to all sorts 
of processes, as it is carried by all sorts of forms, so 
that tones and touches, tastes and smells, may on oc- 
casion come to us as the experienced Me. 

On the whole, therefore, what holds in principle of 
the form of the self-experience holds also in observable 
fact ; the experience may take all possible forms ; though, 
in a given mind, some forms may appear more frequently 



320 Self and Consciousness 

than others. Within the different forms, on the other 
hand, there seems to be a tendency toward the appear- 
ance of particular menial processes, those concerned in 
the visual perception of the body, in felt organic stir 
and in verbal perceptions and ideas. And now, what of 
continuity ? 

Prejudice is strong ; but you must be ready to discard 
it. Experimental and everyday observation both testify, when 
the question is directly put, to the intermittence of the self -ex- 
perience. We are not always aware of our self. The 
self-experience does not appear, for example, when we 
are engaged in our ordinary routine employment. It 
does not appear in concentrated thought; the views 
and theories which a popular psychology regards as 
personal are, as a rule, quite selfless in their forming and 
phrasing. It does not appear when we are absorbed in 
a novel, or a play, or the hearing of music. It need not 
appear in many of the situations that are designated by 
self -words. The very fact that we can call it up at will, 
that we can ' come to ourselves ' whenever we like, in- 
dicates that it is not always present in our experience. 
It is the specific expression of a special determination ; 
and the frequency of the determination varies, we must 
suppose, in different cases; some of us are continually 
recurring to a self-experience, while others find it a 
more casual visitor. 

You should not accept this conclusion blindly; you 
may test it in your own experience. Notice meanwhile 
that, if it is sound, it throws further light upon the 
theories of pp. 316 ff. Mental processes are not always 
experienced as self-processes, but all mental forms and 



§ 76. The Snares of Language 321 

probably all mental processes may lie under the self- 
determination. Feelings do not always bring a reference 
to self, but the self-meaning is very often carried by a 
feeling. The organic sensations are not always self- 
experiences, but a self -feeling may be largely composed of 
organic processes. If we have dismissed the theories 
themselves, we must still credit them with the measure 
of truth that they contain. 

§ 76. The Snares of Language. — You were warned 
on p. 3-6 that language may be misleading, and that the 
phrases which you naturally use oftentimes imply a view 
of the world, or an attitude towards experience, which is 
foreign to science. Nowhere, perhaps, is this discrep- 
ancy greater than in the phrases which refer to the self. 
Language, as we know, is older than science, and ex- 
presses the results of common-sense interpretation rather 
than of factual observation. The self of language is, 
accordingly, not the psychological self, but the counterpart 
of the mannikin-mind (p. 7) ; and just as we must be on 
guard, and remember our psychological definition, when- 
ever in a psychological context we say or think the word 
' mind,' so must we be on guard against the common- 
sense notion of ' self ' that has insinuated itself into a 
thousand turns of familiar speech. An observer, de- 
scribing a particular experience, may say, quite naturally, 
' I find no trace of self-reference ! ' — and there is no 
harm done, if we realise that the / of his remark is the 
traditional self-concept of language, and the self the 
psychological experience of self ; but there may be very 
great harm, if likeness of words leads us to confound the 



322 Self and Consciousness 

personal with the impersonal, common sense with science. 
Only by an unreadable pedantry can we avoid the I- 
phrases and the other personal sentences ; but we must 
always bear in mind that language, the very form and struc- 
ture of it, embodies a theory, an explanation or interpreta- 
tion of the self; and that, if we reject this theory, we have 
to couch our criticism in terms of the theory we reject. 

There is another danger. Language has many words 
which begin with self: self-possession, self-assurance, 
self -consciousness, and the like; and the implication 
is that the corresponding mental processes represent 
self -experiences, in the sense of p. 315. But do they? 
Let us take self -consciousness as an example. A young 
lecturer stands for the first time upon the platform, and a 
kindly soul in the audience may murmur : ' Poor young 
man ! he is dreadfully self-conscious ! ' Truly, the signs 
are there : parched throat, burning cheeks, gasping 
breath, hoarse and broken voice, moist and trembling 
hands, uncertainty of all coordinated movements; 
everything that indicates what the audience, from their 
external standpoint (p. 313), must regard as self-conscious- 
ness; and yet there may be nothing whatever of self- 
reference in the lecturer's own experience. He feels 
timid, excited, heartily uncomfortable; but it is very 
unlikely that he is thinking of himself ; he has too many 
other things to think of ! Suppose that his lecture is a 
success, and that he steps from the lecture-room in a 
mood of self -congratulation ; he feels relief, relaxation ; 
he ' glows ' with satisfaction and pride ; but, again, 
there need be no sort of self-reference in his experience. 
Yet, in writing to a friend about the eventful lecture, 



§ 77- Consciousness and The Subconscious 323 

he may very well say : ' I felt terribly self-conscious when 
I began, but afterwards I really was a bit pleased with 
myself ! ' The personal forms are so natural as to be 
almost inevitable. How often, when a conversation has 
languished, do two or three persons with a simultaneous 
impulse try to revive it — by uttering a long-drawn ' I ' ! 
and how often are we surprised, when we read over a 
letter just written, to see that every paragraph begins 
with the same ' I ' ! Not by any means necessarily 
because we are thinking at the time of ourselves, but very 
likely because we have nothing urgent to say, and so 
slip instinctively into the commonest and most stereo- 
typed pattern of speech. Language, therefore, is no more 
than any other movement (p. 232) an index to mind. The 
I-phrases and the self-words may carry a self-meaning, 
or they may not ; it all depends upon the determination 
of the moment. 

Do not imagine, however, that psychology alone suffers 
from this warp and bias of language ! The tendency to 
personalisation (p. 205), which shows itself in the manni- 
kin-mind and the common-sense self, appears also in 
the ' forces ' of physics and the ' attractions ' of chemis- 
try; and if the psychologist has to clarify the current 
notions of mind and self, the worker in these other 
sciences must, on his side, come to terms with a like heri- 
tage of equivocal words. All such concepts illustrate 
the same speculative trend of primitive thinking ; and all 
of them are stumbling-blocks in the path of science. 

§ 77. Consciousness and The Subconscious. — " Con- 
sciousness," says Professor Ward, " is the vaguest, most 



324 Self and Consciousness 

protean, and most treacherous of psychological terms " ; 
and Bain, writing in 1880, distinguished no less than 
thirteen meanings of the word ; he could find more to- 
day! The ambiguity of the term seems to be due, in 
the last resort, to the running together of two fundamental 
meanings, the one of which is scientific or psychological, 
the other logical or philosophical. In the latter, the 
logical meaning, consciousness is awareness or knowledge, 
and ' conscious of ' means ' aware of ' ; in the former, the 
scientific meaning, consciousness is mental experience, 
experience regarded from the psychological point of view, 
and one can no more use the phrase ' conscious of ' than 
one can use ' mental of.' If you think how natural it is 
to say ' I was conscious of so-and-so,' you will realise 
that the logical meaning is generally current; and if 
you remember that we have the terms ' mind,' ' mental 
process,' as names of mental experience, you will see 
that in psychology the word ' consciousness ' is unneces- 
sary ; we have, in fact, not used it in this book, — until 
we came upon the popular expression ' self -consciousness ' 
in § 76. 

We have avoided the word, however, not only because 
it is unnecessary, but also because the logical or philo- 
sophical meaning that it tends to suggest is directly harm- 
ful in psychology. For the psychologist has nothing in 
the world to do with knowledge or awareness; he stands, 
in this regard, upon precisely the same level as the physi- 
cist or the chemist. Look up the word atom in a diction- 
ary ; you find, perhaps, that it is ' an ultimate indivisible 
particle of matter ' ; and you would smile if you read 
' knowledge of an ultimate indivisible particle of matter.' 



§ 77- Consciousness and The Subconscious 325 

Look up metal; and you find ' an elementary substance 
possessing such and such properties ' ; you would think 
it absurd to say ' an awareness of an elementary sub- 
stance ' possessing those properties. But now think of 
sensation, which is an elementary mental process (p. 65) : 
you would probably not smile if you found ' the first 
stage of knowledge ; the elementary way of knowing 
some phenomenon of the outside world ' ; and that is 
because you are thoroughly accustomed to regard con- 
sciousness as awareness, and conscious processes as 
processes which are aware of something beyond them- 
selves. Yet it is every whit as absurd, from the scientific 
point of view, to make sensation a ' stage of knowledge ' 
or a ' way of knowing ' as it is to define the atom as 
' knowledge ' or the metal as ' an awareness.' Science 
takes experience for granted, deals with the nature of 
things given (p. 4) ; so that questions about ' knowing ' 
or ' being aware of ' lie beyond the range of science, 
whether the particular science is psychology or physics. 
You now understand why it is that we have avoided 
the term ' consciousness.' If we had said that red is an 
elementary conscious process, then you might have 
supposed that it is an elementary process in or by which 
you become aware of a red object; whereas, if we say 
that red is an elementary mental process, you have no 
reason to think of the red object, since ' to become mental 
of a red object ' is not English. It is very likely, all the 
same, that you have been thinking of the object of 
knowledge, in spite of the terminology of the book, and 
in spite of the express warning that science has nothing 
to do with values or meanings or uses ; the statements of 



326 Self and Consciousness 

a text-book, however emphatic they are, cannot always 
make headway against ingrained habits of thought and 
speech. If, then, you have at any point fallen into this 
mistake (and it may comfort you to know that the author, 
in his first years of studentship, was trapped by it again 
and again), go back now and read over the chapters in 
point; and if you discover that the mistake was partly 
due to the language there employed, remember that 
authors are human and that words are very slippery 
things. 

So much of consciousness : what, now, shall we say of 
the subconscious ? The term is fashionable ; and though 
we have nowhere used it, we can hardly pass it by with- 
out mention. The subconscious may be defined as an 
extension of the conscious beyond the limits of observa- 
tion. As an extension of the conscious, it tends always 
to be an extension of meaning beyond the meaning of 
the conscious ; we do not hear of a ' submental.' As an 
extension of the conscious, it is always a matter of 
inference; what we cannot observe, we must infer. So 
there needs no argument to prove that the subconscious is 
not a part of the subject-matter of psychology. How, 
then, does it come into psychology ? 

It comes in as an explanatory concept, like the older 
concept of association (p. 146), to account for, to ra- 
tionalise, the phenomena that are conscious. We have 
ourselves been satisfied with description and correlation, 
and we have therefore confined ourselves to mental and 
nervous processes which are in principle observable; 
though we have often enough been obliged to say that 
the facts, in this or that chapter of psychology or neu- 



§ 77- Consciousness and The Subconscious 327 

rology, are few or wanting. There is, however, in many 
minds, a craving for ' explanation ' ; and it must be 
admitted that such a craving is natural enough ; for it 
shows in every phase of primitive thought, and may be 
traced throughout the history of science. Think, for 
instance, of the potency of explanation by ' cause and 
effect ' ! — though when we examine a case of cause and 
effect we never, in fact, find anything more than correla- 
tion. There are many psychologists, then, who cannot 
be satisfied with description and correlation ; they 
must refer the direction of thought to a ' subconscious dis- 
position,' and explain the connections of ideas by l sub- 
conscious tendencies,' and so on. They have recourse 
to the subconscious for purposes of explanation. 

We must urge two objections against this mode of 
psychologising. In the first place, the construction of a 
subconscious is unnecessary. Science is not called upon 
to ' explain ' anything ; description and correlation are 
the modern — and more modest — representatives of 
the ' explanation ' that an older science looked for and 
professed to find. Secondly, the introduction of a sub- 
conscious is dangerous. It is a matter of inference 
from the conscious ; but who shall draw the line, in such 
a case, between legitimate and illegitimate inference? 
When from the course of the mental stream and the inter- 
play of mental processes we infer the existence of asso- 
ciative and determining tendencies in the nervous 
system, our argument is safeguarded. No man, it is 
true, has seen those tendencies in course ; but the in- 
ference to them is checked and controlled by the whole 
vast body of fact and method that makes up modern 



328 Self and Consciousness 

physiology. Things stand very differently with the sub- 
conscious. Here the inference must, it is plain, go be- 
yond the conscious, since its aim is to explain the con- 
scious ; yet the conscious facts are all the facts we have ; 
when once we have embarked on the subconscious, there 
are no more facts to steer by. Henceforth everything 
depends upon individual preference ; and we may have 
many theories of the subconscious, widely different and 
equally plausible. The danger is that an erroneous 
theory of the subconscious distort our view of the con- 
scious. 

There is, however, another side to this whole question. 
The notion of a subconscious has proved useful in certain 
fields of practical psychology, and more especially in psy- 
chiatry and psychotherapeutics ; and in matters of practice 
utility is a sufficient justification. Science cannot ask 
the physician to give up a theory which works. She 
can only point out that present utility is no test of ulti- 
mate truth, — there were plenty of useful inventions in 
the days when the physics of heat was dominated by 
the theory of caloric, and the physics of light by the 
theory of emission ! — and that nobody has ever ob- 
served, or can ever observe, the subconscious at work ; 
the wonderful things that it does testify rather to their 
reporter's thought and imagination, to his conscious in- 
genuity in explaining, than to the scientific reality of 
the subconscious itself. 

§ 78. Conclusion. — So we are at an end ; and as you 
look back over the chapters of the book, you will have 
your own thoughts about the work done, — about your 



§ 7 8- Conclusion 329 

change of attitude from common sense to psychology, 
about the nature of mind, when mind is regarded from 
the scientific point of view, about the difficult or unsatis- 
factory places in psychology. The author has no wish 
to disturb these thoughts; every student must sum 
things up for himself, as every student, if he is to get the 
scientific point of view, must rely on his own thinking 
from the beginning (p. 36) ; for the kingdom of science 
is not in word but in power. There are, nevertheless, 
a few considerations that may be set down here, not as a 
summary made for you by the author, but simply as 
a general supplement to your own conclusions. 

Realise, then, first of all, that there is nothing in the 
whole wide world that cannot be psychologised. Sound 
and light and heat, law and language and morals, " the 
whole choir of heaven and furniture of earth," all alike 
become subject-matter of psychology if we regard them 
from the psychological standpoint, as they are in man's 
experience (p. 9). The range of psychology is the range 
of that experience, and nothing more narrow. The 
psychological point of view is logically coordinate with 
the point of view of the physical sciences ; these describe 
the world with man left out, psychology describes the 
world with man left in ; but the psychologist surveys the 
broader field. 

Realise, secondly, that you have the materials and the 
opportunity of psychological observation always with you. 
Truly, we must have laboratories ; if we are to attain to 
accurate and comparable results, we must put ourselves 
under conditions that can be rigorously controlled. But 
get the habit of psychological observation, and you will 



330 Self and Consciousness 

be surprised to find (though it follows, does it not, 
from the laws of attention?) how much psychology 
there is in your daily life ; how often you can snapshot 
a baffling experience, and catch a hint of analytical 
possibilities ; how often you light upon something that 
the text-books do not discuss, but that this habit of 
observation reveals and places for you. Take the 
occasions as they come ; plenty of good astronomical 
work has been done with a pair of opera glasses ! — and 
if you cannot, later on, experiment for yourself in a 
laboratory, at least you have gained a new outlook and 
a new competence ; it is as if you had gained access 
to a whole literature by the mastery of some foreign 
language. 

Realise, thirdly, that a system of science, whether the 
science be psychology or any other, is built up of nothing 
else than facts and logic. The facts of observation are 
the essential things; without them there is no science 
possible; but logic makes the facts available and re- 
memberable ; it groups and classifies, decides the se- 
quence of chapters and paragraphs, points to gaps and 
discrepancies in the record of facts, governs the whole 
presentation. So there should be nothing more in a 
text-book of science than facts and logic. The man of 
science, trying to answer an unanswered question (p. 277), 
will guess and forecast and speculate and imagine ; and 
some of his guesses and speculations may be worthy of 
mention in the history of his science ; but there should be 
no glimmer of them in the scientific system. Science, 
you remember, is impersonal and disinterested, dry fact 
and cold logic ; there are all sorts of personal adventures 



§ 78. Conclusion 331 

and interesting episodes by the way, while science is 
in the making ; but if you have the scientific tempera- 
ment, you feel the fascination of fact and logic them- 
selves. 

And, in any case, they are all that science gives you ! 
So realise, lastly, the limitations of science; do not expect 
from it more than it can give. Over and over you hear 
it said ' Science has failed to satisfy us about this ' and 
' Science has shown itself unable to deal with that ' ; 
but ask yourself — if you deem the statements true — 
what are the ' this ' and the ' that,' and whether science 
ever gave any pledge that she would handle them. 
Scientific discoveries have had far-reaching consequences 
for practice, and have changed our whole mode of 
living ; but the fact remains that " the most useful 
parts of science have been investigated for the sake of 
truth, and not for their usefulness." Scientific progress 
is reflected in the systems of logic and ethics and aes- 
thetics, even in metaphysics itself ; but theoretical values 
lie, as practical values also lie, beyond the purview of the 
scientific enquirer. Science is bound down from the 
outset to a certain method, the method of observation ; 
to a certain point of view, the existential as opposed to 
the significant ; to a certain task, the task of description 
and correlation. Beyond these limits, science has no 
pretensions ; within them, she has accomplished much, 
and is earnest to accomplish more. 



332 Self and Consciousness 

Questions and Exercises 

(i) Keep a pad by you for a week, and note down the 
occasions when your experience is wholly selfless and 
markedly selfful. Describe, as well as you can, the various 
self-experiences. 

(2) Mention some of the superstitions that connect the name 
with the personality (p. 313). Is there any echo of these 
superstitions in our own civilised experience ? 

(3) On p. 319 a hint is given of the way in which vision, 
kinaesthesis and organic sensation, and verbal ideas might 
come to be preferred, as vehicles of the meaning of self. Can 
you make any further suggestion as regards kinaesthesis 
and organic sensation? 

(4) A well-known medical writer remarks : " Self is 
stomach. The function of assimilating food is the most 
fundamental of all the functions ; it is antecedent even to 
locomotion and propagation. Hence anything which directly 
affects the organism as a whole affects the stomach." What 
self is here referred to ? 

(5) Professor Mach tells the following story. " I got into 
an omnibus one morning, after a tiring night on the train, 
just as some one else was entering from the far end. ' Some 
broken-down schoolmaster,' I thought. It was myself; 
there was a large mirror opposite the omnibus door " (see 
Analysis of Sensations, 1910, 4). What psychological laws 
does the story illustrate? 

(6) What is meant by the ' unity of consciousness '? 

(7) Sir Walter Scott tells the tale of a boy, always at the 
top of his class, who, when asked a question, " fumbled with 
his fingers at a particular button in the lower part of his waist- 
coat " ; Scott cut the button off, and the boy came down 
from his place of leadership (J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the 
Life of Sir Walter Scott, i., 1837, 94). What is the psy- 
chology of the incident? 

(8) Write a psychological criticism of the following state- 



Questions and Exercises 333 

ment : " Alike in conflict, rivalry, sense of liability to punish- 
ment or vengeance, etc., the truth is continually being borne 
in upon the mind of an animal that it is a separate individ- 
uality; and this though it be conceded that the animal is 
never able, even in the most shadowy manner, to think about 
itself as such. In this way there arises a sort of ' outward 
self-consciousness,' which differs from true or inward self- 
consciousness only in the absence of any attention being 
directed upon the inward mental states as such " (G. J. 
Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, 1888, 198 f.). 

(9) Among the facts which have led to the hypothesis 
of a subconscious are (a) the existence of blind strivings, 
organic tendencies, etc., for which no conscious antecedent 
can be discovered; (b) the mechanisation of complicated 
movements, such as piano-playing; (c) the appearance in 
' memory ' of ideas which seem to have cropped up of them- 
selves, i.e., have no assignable physical or mental condition ; 
(d) the phenomena of secondary personality (Dictionary of 
Philosophy and Psychology, ii., 1902, 606). How does the 
hypothesis help in such cases? and how does the psychology 
of this book take account of the facts ? 

(10) Consider any case of remedial suggestion, of what is 
popularly called faith-cure, that you happen to know at 
first-hand. Show how the hypothesis of subconscious 
agency might naturally occur to one who tries to ' explain ' 
the facts, and show how science might deal with them apart 
from that hypothesis. 

(11) (a) Satisfy yourself, by the collection of phrases, 
that the words ' conscious,' ' subconscious,' ' unconscious,' 
are used in very various meanings, (b) What does the word 
' conscious ' mean by derivation ? How did it originate ? 

(12) The complaint is often made that scientific men do 
not popularise their results. What do you take to be the 
great stumbling-block in the way of popularisation? 



334 Self and Consciousness 

References 

W. James, Principles of Psychology, L, 1890, chs. ix., x. ; 
J. Sully, The Human Mind, i., 1892, ch. xii., §§ 25, 26; 
C. Mercier, Sanity and Insanity, 1899; T. Ribot, The 
Diseases of Personality, 1895 ; J. M. Baldwin, Mental De- 
velopment in the Child and the Race : Methods and Processes, 
1906, and Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental 
Development, 1906, refs. in indices; W. Wundt, Lectures on 
Human and Animal Psychology, 1896, and Outlines of 
Psychology, 1907, refs. in indices; E. B. Titchener, Text- 
book of Psychology, 1910, 544 ff. ; A. Bain, The Emotions 
and the Will, 1880, 539 ff., 602 ff. ; T. Flournoy, From India 
to the Planet Mars, 1900; M. Prince, The Dissociation of 
a Personality, 1906, and The Unconscious, 1914; S. Freud, 
Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 1914; B. Hart and C. 
Spearman, General Ability, Its Existence and Nature, in 
the British Journal of Psychology, v., March 1912, 51 ff. 

On beliefs connected with names, see E. B. Tylor, Re- 
searches into the Early History of Mankind, 1878, 123 ff . ; 
J. G. Frazer, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, 191 1, 318 ff. 



APPENDIX 

Dreaming and Hypnosis 

I am assured that a lady of a well-known court saw in a dream and 
described to her friends the person she afterwards married, and the hall 
in which the betrothal was celebrated ; and she did this before she had 
seen or known either the man or the place. They attributed the cir- 
cumstance to some indefinite secret presentiment ; but chance may pro- 
duce this effect, since it is quite rare that it happens; besides, dream- 
images being somewhat obscure, there is more liberty in connecting them 
afterwards with certain others. — Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 

§ 79. Sleep and Dream. — The profound sleep that comes 
to us every night, and that we take entirely as a matter of 
course, rests without any doubt upon an instinctive tendency ; 
but there can be little doubt, either, that the instinct has 
been modified in the course of human evolution. It seems 
probable, indeed, that profound sleep, the lapse of all but the 
vegetative organic functions, has been developed from the same 
fundamental tendency as hypnosis, so that natural sleep 
and artificial hypnosis represent two branches which 
spring from a single stem. This original and instinctive 
tendency is toward what we may call, in biological phrase, 
a partial or defensive sleep, a rest enjoyed while the animal 
is still partly on guard. It underlies the sleep of the mother, 
who is roused at once by the movement of her infant child ; 
the sleep of the nurse, who is awaked by the restlessness of 
her patient ; the sleep of the tired horseman or driver, who 
keeps the saddle or holds the reins, and remains alive to any 
sign of uneasiness on the part of his horse. It shows also in 
the ability of the wearied surgeon to rouse himself and per- 
form an operation, though he falls asleep once more the 

335 



336 Dreaming and Hypnosis 

moment it is over and has no remembrance of it at his normal 
waking. Such a partial rest, persisting only thus occasion- 
ally in the life of civilised man, is all that an animal sur- 
rounded by dangers can afford ; if sight and smell and taste 
may be allowed to lapse, still touch and hearing must keep 
awake, — must keep awake, at any rate, to the kind of 
stimulus that spells danger. We are speaking now in figura- 
tive terms ; the history and nervous mechanism of the sleep- 
tendency offer a problem to science, and must be scientifically 
worked out ; but it is enough here if you get a general notion 
of the way in which sleep began. 

In process of time, as dangers grow less or as the nightly care 
of the community is put into the hands of watchmen whose 
special duty it is to signal their approach, sleep becomes total 
and profound. Even our own protected sleep, however, is 
not always undisturbed. We resign ourselves to it with a 
full sense of security ; and we go to sleep in a dark and quiet 
room, we rid ourselves of the friction of clothes, we keep a 
constant temperature in our bedroom, we lie down. Sleep, 
nevertheless, is interrupted, more or less often according to 
age and constitution, by a dream, by a series of experiences 
like those of the waking life ; and sometimes the dream is 
accompanied by muscular activity; we talk or walk in our 
sleep. 

The dream, then, is subject-matter for psychology; and 
the first question that we have to ask about it concerns its 
make-up; of what mental processes is the dream composed? 
The answer is twofold. So far as pattern goes, anything what- 
soever may appear in the dream-state : perception, memory, 
emotion, imagination, thought, everything. But as regards 
the mental processes themselves, the dream is selective; 
certain processes are preferred for dreaming, so to say, as 
certain processes are preferred for the representation of 
self. The details of dreams are very quickly forgotten; 
and there is always danger lest recall and report, in the wak- 
ing state, change the terms of a dream, translate them from 



§ 79- Sleep and Dream 337 

their original mode into the customary terms of waking ex- 
perience. We have, however, a large number of records, 
taken under favourable conditions, and we find substantial 
agreement among the various observers. Dreams are mainly 
visual, though lights are more and colours are less common, 
perhaps, than is ordinarily supposed. Next in order of 
frequency to vision stands audition ; conversation, especially, 
is a common feature of dreams. Next follow sense-feelings 
and feeling-attitudes; unpleasant experiences seem, on the 
whole, to be more frequent than pleasant, though there are 
marked individual differences. Thereafter, at a wide re- 
move, come touch and kinaesthesis and organic complexes ; 
and last of all, taste and smell. 

We know so little of the nervous correlates of the dream 
that a discussion of these facts must of necessity be specula- 
tive. It has been said that we dream largely in terms of 
sight for the same reason that we remember and imagine 
largely in those terms (' dream ' is, for that matter, the older 
English word for ' imagine ' ) : the eye is the most important 
of all the sense-organs, the organ most continuously used, 
and the organ most relied upon for knowledge of the outside 
world ; hence the visual centre of the brain has multitudinous 
connections with all the other brain-centres, and is readily 
excited when any one of them is excited. It has been pointed 
out, also, that the eye is extremely sensitive to slight changes 
of illumination, as well as to changes in the pressure of the 
eyelids, the state of circulation in the retina, and so forth; 
and that the sensations thus set up are reinforced by the per- 
sistent central grey. Observation has proved that the figures 
of a dream-scene may roughly correspond with the dots and 
splashes of light and colour that you see over the dark field 
of vision just before you fall asleep. So in regard to hearing : 
it may be said that verbal perceptions and ideas are, in the 
waking life, subordinate in number and importance only to 
those of vision ; and it may be said, also, that the ear is the 
great defensive organ of the night-time, so that ear-sleep (if 



338 Dreaming and Hypnosis 

we may coin the word) is rarely profound, and the ear is 
liable to excitation by any chance crack or rustle in our sur- 
roundings, even by the pulsing of the blood through its own 
vessels. Here, indeed, we raise the whole difficult question 
of the origination of dreams. We cannot say that a dream 
may not arise ' in the brain ' altogether apart from stimu- 
lation of a sense-organ ; yet the sense-organs are always 
liable to stimulation, from without or from within ; we know 
that stimuli, too weak to arouse a sleeper, will set up dreams ; 
and it seems safe to conclude that most dreams are originated 
by sensory stimulation, while their subsequent course is due 
to associative and perhaps to determining tendencies active 
at the moment. Attempts have been made to refer certain 
familiar kinds of dream — dreams of flying, falling, appearing 
in public scantily clothed, preparing for a journey, etc. — to 
particular forms of stimulus : arrest of heart-beat, irregular 
breathing, cold from the slipping down of bed-clothes, etc. ; 
but no positive correlation has been arrived at. 

Dreams are ordinarily regarded as the type of fantastic and 
disordered experience, " the children of an idle brain, begot 
of nothing but vain fantasy " ; and some dreams, it is true, 
are very fragmentary, and some dream-combinations seem 
ridiculous enough to the waking judgement, and some shifts 
of dream-scene are startlingly abrupt. It may be questioned, 
nevertheless, whether the changes are in fact more sudden 
or more radical than those of the waking life, and whether 
the grouping is more fantastic than in the day-dream. The 
great perceptive attitudes remain for the most part unchanged. 
We notice, on later reflection, that time may be curiously 
foreshortened, so that we have the events of a day crowded 
into a few seconds ; but this is due partly to the occurrence 
of attitudes, of the nutshell-packing of experiences (p. 271), 
such as we find also in our waking memories, and partly to 
our own reflective reading of the dream; we, who are now 
awake, distribute the events over a day, much as the novelist 
may do in telling his story, or the playwright in developing 



§ 79- Sleep and Dream 339 

his plot. The sense of personal identity is rarely lost; and 
the dream frequently reflects the personality of the dreamer ; 
temperament, interests, principles, show themselves in it; 
no one of us could dream his neighbour's dreams. In general, 
too, the dream plays about a topic or situation; and if the 
changes are both sudden and profound, we must remember 
that our waking trains are held in course, as dreams are not, 
by the continuity of the stimuli around us, and that even so we 
are often interrupted in a current train, and shift from topic 
to topic at a moment's notice. The dream is under no 
external control by an environment, nor is it as a rule or- 
ganised and regulated throughout by a dominant determining 
tendency, as is the case with thought and constructive 
imagination. It is subject, however, to the laws of associa- 
tive tendency, and sometimes at any rate it seems to issue 
from a determination; a dream may, for example, be con- 
tinued on successive nights. On the whole, then, dream-ex- 
perience is less disorderly than is usually supposed. Our 
statements must be guarded : we cannot say that the per- 
ceptive attitudes are never disturbed; we know that per- 
sonality may be greatly modified ; we know that scene may 
follow scene in the most bizarre way. The whole trend of 
popular psychology, however, is to emphasize the differences 
between dreaming and waking, while the trend of accurate 
observation is to bring them together. 

The dream-incidents are derived, in the lighter stages of 
of sleep, mainly from the incidents of the preceding day, 
and in the deeper stages mainly from the remoter experience 
of the waking life. This is what we should expect from our 
knowledge of the temporal course of associative tendencies. 
Moreover, we know that, in profound sleep, the brain is 
comparatively bloodless ; and it is reasonable to suppose that, 
in dreaming, the activity of the tendencies is local and 
sporadic. That would account for the incongruities that our 
waking judgement discovers in the dream-situations, and 
also for the general ineffectiveness of dream-thought. When, 



34° Dreaming and Hypnosis 

however, we enquire further into the nervous mechanism of 
dreaming, we must enter the realm of hypothesis. It is a 
real puzzle, for instance, that we do not oftener walk and talk 
in our sleep; for dream-ideas are vivid, and the vivid ideas 
of the waking life are ordinarily followed or accompanied by 
action. We may guess that there is a positive blocking of 
the nerve-paths that lead from sensory to motor centres in 
the brain, or from the motor centres to the muscles ; else the 
dream would surely be talked or acted out ; but we can say 
nothing definite about this motor inhibition. The organism 
at large seems to be under a ' negative suggestion ' in regard 
to movement ; for the pattern of action — though, like all 
the mental patterns, it may appear in the dream-state — is 
notably less frequent than the patterns of perception and 
idea and emotion. 

We said that dream-ideas are vivid ; and there is no doubt 
that dreams in general have an hallucinatory character; 
dream-images are extremely vivid, dream-scenes are staged 
in what is taken for objective space, dream-events occur 
without any felt dependence upon the dreamer. This im- 
pression of the reality of dream-incident is partly due to a 
negative condition ; we have no means, in the dream-state, of 
testing or checking what happens. In the waking life we 
compare experience with experience ; in the dream there is 
nothing with which the present train of ideas may be com- 
pared. It seems, however, that the hallucinatory character 
is native to our dream-ideas, that it is due to positive as well 
as negative conditions ; though, again, we cannot say what 
the conditions are, until we know more about the nervous 
correlate of dreaming. The net result is that, in popular 
phrase, we take our dreams for granted ; the dream-world, so 
long as we are in it, appears as real as the world of our waking 
existence. This does not at all mean that we accept, blindly, 
everything that takes place. We may protest and criticise 
in dreams, just precisely as we protest and criticise in real 
life ; we may dream that we are dreaming, just as we some- 



§ 8o. Hypnosis 341 

times say ' I must have been dreaming ' when we give a wrong 
account of some waking experience or find ourselves mistaken 
in a recollection ; and we may have a sense of unreality in 
dreams, just as we have it now and again in waking situations. 
It means only that the nervous system of the dreamer is 
stamped with the great biological tendencies that we have 
noted and discussed; the tendency to take things as real is 
present by night as well as by day. 

The old common-sense notion that dreams are prophetic 
has no foundation in fact. The idea that underlies it — the 
idea that dreams must be of some use to the organism — 
nevertheless persists, and has found recent expression in a 
comprehensive theory of dreams. The theory is that all 
dreams, if one interprets them aright, represent the fulfilment of 
a wish, entertained in the waking life but repressed by cir- 
cumstances. The organism attains by night, though in 
veiled and transmuted shape, what it has failed of attaining 
by day. This theory has been elaborated and illustrated 
with very great ingenuity; but its claims are too sweeping. 
Recent observations seem to show that the wish-dream is 
likely to occur in the hours before waking, rather than in 
the early hours of the night or in the middle period of profound 
sleep ; that many dreams cannot be interpreted, even with 
the best will, as fulfilments of wish ; and, in particular, that 
fear-dreams form a category as distinct and ultimate as 
wish-dreams. The merit of the theory is that it emphasises 
the feeling-processes of the dream-life; it does not give us 
the key to the psychology of dreaming. 

§ 80. Hypnosis. — We have seen that there are two lines 
of development from partial or defensive sleep ; and that 
hypnosis is the final term of the one line, as normal deep 
sleep is the final term of the other. Hypnosis may therefore 
be regarded as a state in which the organism is partly asleep, 
and partly alert and awake. The wakefulness is characterised 
by a high degree of attention; and the hypnotised subject 



342 Dreaming and Hypnosis 

is accordingly liable to suggestion by anything that fits 
in with the direction of attention. 

The symptoms of hypnosis do not follow any stereotyped 
pattern ; so that it is difficult to draw a generalised picture of 
the hypnotic individual. If, however, we are willing to run 
the risk of generalisation, we may distinguish three successive 
stages in the phenomena. The hypnotised subject is at 
first heavy or drowsy; his behaviour is like that of a man 
suddenly aroused from sound sleep, and not yet ' come to 
himself.' Then follows the stage of light hypnosis or, as it is 
technically called, the stage of catalepsy. The subject is to 
some extent anaesthetic; his sense-organs are closed to all 
the ordinary impressions from the outside world. At the 
same time, he hears what is said to him by the operator, and 
performs any action that the operator may suggest. He does 
nothing without the word of command; so that he will 
maintain a position, however uncomfortable it might be 
under ordinary circumstances, until the order comes to relax 
it. On waking, he remembers cloudily what took place 
during hypnosis. In the third and final stage, which is 
known as somnambulism, the anaesthesia becomes more 
complete ; and the subject not only acts, but also perceives, 
at the bidding of the operator ; takes coal for sugar, ink for 
wine, tapping on the table for the playing of a violin, and so 
forth. On waking, he has no memory of what has taken 
place. 

We see, then, that there are jour main symptoms of hypnosis: 
anesthesia, motionlessness, suggestibility and amnesia; and 
it is worth while to remind ourselves, at once, that all these 
symptoms have their counterparts in the normal waking 
life. Thus, a child falls down and hurts itself; it may be 
crying bitterly ; but you distract its attention by a toy, and 
the crying stops and the pain is forgotten ; the diversion of 
attention has meant anaesthesia. Again, you are on a country 
walk with a friend, and you begin to discuss some topic of 
mutual interest ; you both get more and more absorbed, 



§ 8o. Hypnosis 343 

and you both walk more and more slowly, until presently you 
find yourselves at a standstill in the middle of the road ; 
concentrated attention has meant arrest of movement. If 
the lecturer in a class-room says : ' I want you now to take 
down what I am going to say,' the suggestion is immediately 
accepted, and the whole class makes ready to write. Finally, 
we are all forgetful of what happens in a particular situation 
if circumstances change and we are confronted by another 
situation; how many of us remember our dreams? The 
new day brings its novel situations, and the dreams drop 
out of sight; and the change from dreaming to waking is 
no greater than the change from the hypnotic to the normal 
state. Hence the peculiarity of hypnosis is not the intro- 
duction of strange or curious phenomena, but rather the 
grouping, in an extreme and unusual way, of phenomena 
with which we are in principle familiar. 

It would seem to follow from this analysis that we are all 
and sundry liable, under certain favourable conditions, to jail 
into the hypnotic state; and that conclusion is borne out by 
the facts. Only idiots and infants are exempt from hypnosis ; 
and they are exempt only because of the low development of 
attention, because they cannot, under any conditions, con- 
centrate or ' pull themselves together.' When people tell 
you that Professor So-and-so tried to hypnotise them, but 
that their will proved too strong for him, you may reply that 
they do not understand what they are talking about; it 
would be as logical for them to assert that the champion 
tennis-player of the world had failed to beat them in a match, 
because they had refused to lift a racquet. The stronger 
the ' will,' that is to say, the stronger the habit of absorbed 
attention and the greater the power of dominant determina- 
tions, the easier is the induction of hypnosis. Moreover, 
as human beings are one and all liable to be hypnotised, so 
do we find that the animals, in their degree, are liable to some- 
thing like catalepsy. The nightly sleep of birds and the 
winter-sleep of many animals is a cataleptic sleep ; very many 



344 Dreaming and Hypnosis 

insects ' sham dead,' as we say, when they are surprised or 
handled; and animals may be thrown, by manipulation, 
into an artificial state which resembles catalepsy in ourselves, 
and which has received the like name of cataplexy (' catalepsy' 
is a seizure, and ' cataplexy ' is a stroke). 

So much for the primary facts : what, now, of the ' opera- 
tor ' ? Well, it is quite possible to hypnotise oneself, just 
as it is quite possible to put oneself to sleep by counting sheep 
or listening to an imaginary rain. One has only to mean or 
intend to oneself that the hypnotic state is coming, and — if 
there is no interruption — it will presently come ; self-sugges- 
tion or autosuggestion may be as effective as the suggestion 
of an operator. For in every case the influence that the opera- 
tor has over the subject is an influence given him by the subject; 
the immediate conditions of hypnosis lie in the subject him- 
self, and not in the personality of some other man. The pro- 
fessional operator has, it is true, two advantages. He asserts 
emphatically that he ' can hypnotise ' ; he advertises ; and 
we tend to believe emphatic and repeated statements, how- 
ever groundless they may really be ; so that we are likely to 
give him an influence over us before we have even seen him. 
Secondly, the operator knows, from long experience with 
hypnotised subjects, how the individual shall most readily be 
brought into the hypnotic state, how (that is) his complete 
attention may be secured and directed : whether by coaxing 
or by bullying, whether by strokes of the hand that suggest 
a gradual flow of power or by a smart blow on the back of the 
neck that produces a momentary helplessness and confusion. 
All the ' methods ' of hypnotising are so many tricks to bring 
about a state of undivided attention and a corresponding 
suggestibility in the subject. So the operator has genuine 
advantages, but they are advantages that might be secured 
by anyone who took the trouble; they are not connected 
with special gifts or superiorities. 

Here, however, you may raise an objection ; you will say 
that operator and subject are en rapport, that there is a 



§ 8o. Hypnosis 345 

special bond which connects them, and that the records of 
hypnosis prove it. Yes, there may be a special bond ; and 
yet the preceding paragraph sets forth the truth about the 
operator. Do we not all believe in our own physician, 
our own family lawyer, our own clergyman? and yet 
our neighbours make different choices. Supppose, then, 
that you have first-hand evidence of the powers of 
some platform operator, or of some physician who treats 
his patients hypnotically; you may very easily come to 
think that this particular man has a peculiar control over you. 
You may suggest this belief to yourself, or perhaps the 
physician — not wishing to have his case interfered with by 
others — may suggest it to you ; in any event, you are im- 
bued with the idea that this man, and this man only, is able 
to treat you ; and it then follows, naturally, that the required 
concentration of attention and the required openness to 
suggestion can be secured only when he is present. But the 
rapport is, after all, nothing more than an insistent belief of 
your own; it is neither more effective nor less intelligible 
than would be the contrary belief that a certain person of 
your acquaintance could not hypnotise you. So far, there- 
fore, from invalidating our former conclusions, the occasional 
existence of the rapport serves to confirm them. 

We now turn from the hypnotic state itself to its relations 
with the waking state ; and the first point to consider is the 
fact of post-hypnotic or terminal suggestion. Suppose 
that an operator suggests to the hypnotised subject that a 
certain action is to be performed at such-and-such a time after 
waking; " before I wake you let me impress upon you that 
you are to drink two glasses of water at five o'clock this 
afternoon ; you understand ? — two glasses of water at five 
o'clock." The subject rouses ; has no memory of the com- 
mand ; and yet, when the time comes, obediently pours and 
drinks the water. The fact is, you see, that the suggestion 
of time builds a bridge between the two separate states, the 
hypnotic and the waking; the idea of time is common to 



346 Dreaming and Hypnosis 

both. Hence when the suggested time comes round, and the 
subject knows — by the clock, by the sun, by his occupation, 
by his organic sensations — that five o'clock is approximately 
here, this idea acts as a suggestion ; the hypnotic state is 
reinstated for a while, though probably in weakened form; 
and the action is performed. As soon as it is over, the sub- 
ject is his waking self again. 

We have the obverse of this post-hypnotic suggestion in 
the phenomenon of double consciousness. A subject is 
hypnotised and becomes somnambulistic ; when he is waked, 
he has no memory whatsoever of the events that occurred 
during the hypnotic state. Later, he is hypnotised again; 
and now it turns out that he remembers what took place 
during the previous hypnosis. So he seems to have a 
double consciousness; the normal waking consciousness, 
which is sensibly continuous in his waking states, and a 
secondary hypnotic consciousness, which is continuous from 
one state of somnambulism to another. There is, again, 
nothing mysterious in the facts; we have their parallel in 
the normal shifts of personality; we have seen that a man 
is a different self in the office, on the golf-links, with his 
children in the nursery ; and we have now only to add that 
the known laws of memory are adequate to these phenomena 
of double consciousness. For we do not pass in thought from 
one situation to another unless the situations are connected 
by some idea which is common to them both; the hard- 
worked professional man, when he is on the links, forgets 
the office; that is the reason for his play; and he forgets 
the office because there is no community of ideas between his 
work and his recreation. In hypnosis, too, we break sharply 
with the waking life ; if the two are to be connected, a bridge 
must be built ad hoc by the operator ; but when we relapse 
into hypnosis we pick up again the thread of our hypnotic 
memory, as naturally as the professional man picks up his 
work when he seats himself at his desk after a half-holiday. 

There are still a couple of questions, often asked by students, 



§ 8o. Hypnosis 347 

that you may care to have answered ; and the first of them 
usually takes the form : Can a man be hypnotised against his 
will? To which the author's reply always is: It depends 
on what you mean by ' against his will.' For consider ! 
There is no reason at all why we may not, any one of us, be 
taken off guard and surprised into the hypnotic state. We 
have probably all been surprised by sleep during a lecture or 
a sermon ; the conditions were favourable, and we nodded. 
So the conditions may be favourable for hypnosis; and if 
someone is watching us, and sees that the conditions are 
favourable, he may have us hypnotised before we know 
where we are. The risk is not great ; but the possibility is 
there. Again, if a patient has fallen into the habit of taking 
hypnotic treatment, and if he has thus slipped into a position 
of invalidish dependence upon his physician, so that obedi- 
ence to the suggestion of hypnosis has become natural to 
him, then it is entirely likely that the physician's command 
would induce the hypnotic state, even if the patient at the 
time should not desire it. And what holds of physician and 
patient holds of any operator and any subject in like circum- 
stances; the habit of obedience grows by obeying. In this 
sense, then, one might be hypnotised ' against one's will.' 
If, however, the question means what it is probably intended 
to mean : Can another man come to me and, by virtue of 
some inherent power, force me into hypnosis in spite of my 
resistance to that suggestion? then the answer is No; no 
more than a man can force you to lend him money or to 
perjure yourself for him in a court of law. It is you who 
must entertain his suggestion; so long as you refuse to do 
that, you are immune to hypnosis at his hands. 

The other question concerns the value of hypnosis for med- 
ical or therapeutic purposes; can hypnosis effect cures? 
can it replace the anesthetics of ordinary medical practice? 
It has, as a matter of fact, received fairly extended trial as an 
anaesthetic ; and while it has allowed many operations, minor 
and major, to be carried out successfully, it is far less reliable 



348 Dreaming and Hypnosis ' 

than the anaesthetic drugs; mainly, no doubt, because it 
cannot be administered by the physician, as drugs can, but 
depends upon the attitude of the patient himself. There is 
no future for hypnosis in this connection. As to its thera- 
peutic value, we can only say that whatever can be accom- 
plished by suggestion, in the normal life, can be accom- 
plished by the very strong suggestion of hypnosis in the dis- 
ordered life. A suggestion can initiate, modify, and arrest 
movement; a sharp rebuke will start a child into activity, 
or change his occupation, or stop a present misdeed and 
prevent like misdeeds in the immediate future. A sugges- 
tion, again, can make us blush ; and a suggestion can make us 
cry. Here, then, is the therapeutic value of hypnosis; 
it may arrest or remedy habits like alcoholism, and it may act 
upon derangements of circulation and secretion. Farther 
than this it cannot go ; and even within these limits its 
utility is variable. Some children obey the first word of 
command, and others must be bidden over and over again 
before they do as they are told; some of us blush easily, 
and some hardly ever ; some are readily stirred to tears, and 
some with great difficulty. So it is with the liability to 
hypnotic suggestion ; everyone is liable, but not everyone 
to the same degree. Besides, as we saw just now, the habit 
of hypnosis grows, like all habits, upon him who has formed 
it; the patient may develop a craving for the hypnotic 
treatment, and in this way may take on a habit of dependence, 
of constant reliance upon others, which is as afflicting and 
demoralising as the disorder which the treatment was meant 
to cure. So that, on the whole, hypnosis should not be lightly 
appealed to ; the decision should in every case remain in the 
hands of the experienced physician. 

There is one other effect of hypnosis that we have not 
spoken of in detail, and that is of great psychological interest ; 
the somnambulist, we said, will perceive as the operator wishes 
him to perceive, will take coal for sugar and ink for wine. 
It has long been debated whether this statement is literally 



References 349 

true. The hypnotised subject behaves as if he perceived the 
sugar and the wine ; but is there any reason to think that he 
actually perceives them? Or if the suggestion is negative, 
and the subject is told that a certain person has left the room, 
he will behave as if that person were no longer present ; but 
does he actually fail to see him? May not the suggestion 
bear directly upon the subject's conduct, and leave his per- 
ceptions unchanged? The facts point in both directions. 
Many of the apparent changes of perception are, in all proba- 
bility, nothing more than changes of behaviour towards the 
perceptual stimuli; but there is, all the same, no impossi- 
bility in a change of perception itself. We have already 
noted the negative effects of abstraction (p. 281) ; and recent 
experiments with normal subjects seem to show conclusively 
that a suggestion, a form of words that carries the force of a 
command, may set up the mental process, or the change of 
mental processes, normally correlated with presence or change 
of external stimulus. A red, seen under the suggestion of 
blue, will not only be reported as bluish, but will actually 
look bluish ; and a thermally indifferent impression will not 
only be reported as warm or cold, but will actually be felt 
warm or cold. If such things happen in the normal waking 
life, they may assuredly happen in the narrowed and inten- 
sive suggestibility of the hypnotic state. 

References 

A. Moll, Hypnotism, 1891 ; W. Wundt, Lectures on 
Human and Animal Psychology, 1896, Lect. xxii. ; M. de 
Manace'ine, Sleep, 1897 ; J. Jastrow, Fact and Fable in Psy- 
chology, 1900; E. Jones, Freud's Theory of Dreams, in 
American Journal of Psychology, xxi., April 1910, 283 ff. ; 
S. Ferenczi, The Psychological Analysis of Dreams, ibid., 
309 ff. ; M. Bentley, The Study of Dreams, ibid., xxvi., April 
1915, 196 ff. 



INDEX OF NAMES 



Angelo, M., 299. 

Aristotle, 25, 41, 84, 142 f., 14s if., 

168, 17s, 218, 305. 
Arnold, M., 305. 

Bacon, F., 34, 313. 

Bain, A., 229, 257, 260, 324, 334. 

Baldwin, J. M., 41, 72, 89, 334. 

Barrie, J. M., 247. 

Bastian, H. C, 72. 

Beethoven, L. van, ig6. 

Bentley, M., 349. 

Bergson, H., 229. 

Berkeley, G., 264, 289. 

Blagden, C. O., 72. 

Boas, F., 303, 306. 

Bradley, F. H., 174, 176. 

Bridgman, L., 27, 41. 

Buridan, J., 247. 

Burr, A. R., 39. 

Cannon, W. B., 220 f., 229. 
Carpenter, W. B., 108 f., in. 
Carroll, L., 21. 
Charcot, J. M., 139, 143. 
Chavannes, P. de, 196. 
Clifford, W. K., 38. 

Dalton, J., 58, 72. 

Darwin, C, 3, 51, 222 f., 225, 228 f. 

Da Vinci, L., 228. 

Deland, M., 175. 

Descartes, R., 228. 

Dessoir, M., 42. 

Dickens, C, 141, 187, 202. 

Downey, J. E., 88. 

Dunlap, K., 41. 

Ebbinghaus, H., 151 f., 176. 

Ferenczi, S., 349. 
Fernald, M. R., 144. 
Fiske, E. W., 41. 
Flournoy, T., 334. 
France, A., 293. 



Franz, S. I., 41. 
Frazer, J. G., 40, 334. 
Freud, S., 334. 
Froude, J. A., 37 f. 

Galen, C, 227. 

Galton, F., 51, 87 f., 140. 

Goethe, J. W. von, 141. 

Haddon, A. C, 306. 
Hall, F. H., 41. 
Hamilton, W., 103, no f. 
Hammond, W. A., 41. 
Hart, B., 334. 
Hawthorne, N., 201. 
Hearn, L., 194, 294 f., 306. 
Helmholtz, H. L. F. von, 38, 54 f., 

72, 143- 
Henry, W. C, 72. 
Hering, E., sg, 202. 
Hill, A., 37 f. 
Hobbes, T., 162, 261 f. 
Howe, M., 41. 
Howell, W. H., 72. 
Hume, D., 73, 76, 88, 148, 258. 
Huxley, T. H., 20, 37 f., 243 f., 260, 

264, 289. 

James, W., 25, 39, in, 141, 143, i49» 
168, 174, 176, 202, 207, 218 ff., 229, 
256, 260, 287 f., 334. 

Jastrow, J., 41, 349. 

Jevons, W. S., 41, 202. 

Jones, E., 349. 

Kipling, R., 98. 
Kirchhoff, G. R., 37 f. 
Klemm, O., 42. 
Kiilpe, O., 41, 176. 
Kuhlmann, F., 202. 

Ladd, G. T., 38, 41, 72. 
Lang, A., 206. 
Lange, C, 219, 221. 
Lathrop, G. P., 201. 



351 



352 



Index 



Le Bon, G., 41. 
Leuba, J. H., 303, 306. 
Lewes, G. H., 183, 202. 
Ludwig, C, 48. 

McDougall, W., 41, 229. 
Mach, E., 72, 332. 
Manaceine, M. de, 349. 
Merrier, C, 334. 
Meredith, G., 202. 
Meumann, E., 176. 
MU1, J., 174. 

mui, j. s, 39. 

Millet, J. F., 299. 
Moll, A., 41, 349. 
Moore, G., 306. 
Morgan, C. L., 247, 260. 
Miinsterberg, H., 42. 
Myers, C. S., 72, 89, 176. 

Newton, I., 36, 39. 

Offner, M., 176. 

Parry, C. H. H., 143. 

Parsons, J. H., 72. 

Pearson, K., 38. 

Pillsbury, W. B., 38 f., no f., 28 

Plato, 65, 186. 

Poe, E. A., 201. 

Preyer, W., 41. 

Prince, M., 334. 

Quintilian, M. F., 202. 

Rhys Davids, C. A. F., 41. 
Ribot, T., 202, 229, 288, 306, 334. 
Romanes, G. J., 333. 
Rousseau, J. J., 40. 
Ruskin, J., 299. 



Sanford, E. C., 260. 

Santayana, G., 306. 

Schafer, E. A., 72. 

Scott, W., 332. 

Scriabin, A. N., 77. 

Shakespeare, W., 302. 

Skeat, W. W., 72. 

Spearman, C., 334. 

Spencer, H., 37 f., 40, 84 ff., 89, 257, 

260. 
Stephen, L., 257, 260. 
Stoelting, C. H., 142, 260. 
Stoning, G., 41. 
Stout, G. F., 38. 
Sully, J., 229, 258, 260, 306, 334. 

Taylor, H. O., 40. 
Thackeray, W. M., 227. 
Thomas of Aquino, 103, in. 
Thorndike, E. L., 42, 173, 176, 229, 

301, 306. 
Titian, 299. 
Tylor, E. B., 39 f., 72, 289, 334. 

Velasquez, D., 299. 
Voltaire, F. M., 286. 

Wagner, R., 30, 77, 82. 
Ward, J., 38, 289, 323. 
Washburn, M. F., 41. 
Watson, J. B., 41. 
Weber, E. H., 68 f. 
Wells, H. G., 2. 
Whewell, W., 40. 
Whistler, J. McN., 296. 
Woodworth, R. S., 41, 72. 
Wundt, W., 26, 41, 72, 88 f., in, 143, 
229, 260, 288, 306, 334, 349. 

Yerkes, A. W., 41. 
Yerkes, R. M., 41. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



Absolute impression, 125, 285. 

Abstract idea, 263 ff. 

Abstraction, nature of, 280; experi- 
ments on, 249 f., 280 ff. ; laws of, 
280 f., 349. 

Accommodation, sensations of, 128. 

Ache, 64. 

Action, distinguished from movement, 
231 ; psychological problem of, 
231 f., 258; typical, 233 ff. ; im- 
pulsive, 234 f., 244 f . ; studied in 
the reaction experiment, 236 ff . ; 
varies with shift of emphasis in 
instruction, 242, 252 ; sensorimotor 
and ideomotor, 243, 251; artificial 
and physiological reflex, 243 f., 
251 ; primitive, 244 f., 258 ; selec- 
tive, 246 ff . ; by ' trial and error, ' 
247 f. ; volitional, 249 ff. ; alleged 
determination of, by pleasure and 
pain, 257 f. 

Activity, ascribed by common sense 
to mind, 6 f., 91 f., 146, 258. 

Adaptation, visual, 61; olfactory, 51, 
63- 

Esthetic sentiments, 299 f., 301 f. 

After-image, visual negative, 62, 74; 
positive, 74, 133 ; of memory, 74. 

Amnesia, hypnotic, 342 f. 

Anaesthesia, kinesthetic, 46; in hyp- 
nosis, 342 f. 

Analysis, psychological, 15 f., 112; 
tested by synthesis and repeated 
analysis, 16 f. ; of perception and 
idea, 114 ff., 125, 125 f. ; of recogni- 
tion, 177 ff. ; of emotion, 215 f. ; 
of a typical action, 234 f. ; of ex- 
pectation, 272 ff. ; of intellectual 
attitudes, 274 f. 

Animals, psychology of, 12 ff., 32, 51, 
134, 219 f., 247, 267. 

Antagonism, retinal, 59 f., 61, 63. 

Antithesis, Darwin's principle of, 223. 

Apprehension, direct, 181 f. ; disturb- 
ance of, 182 f. 



Association, the doctrine of, derives 
from Aristotle, 145 ff. ; 'laws' of, 
146 f., 168, 175 ; agreeable to com- 
mon sense, 146 ff ., 203 ; has done 
psychological service, 148; works 
with meanings, 149, 162, 163 f., 
168; regards course of ideas too 
intellectually, 161 f., 258; succes- 
sive, 161 f. ; regards action too 
emotionally, 258. 

Attention, common-sense view of, 
91 ; description of, 91 f. ; implies 
shift of vividness, 91 f., 93 f. ; a 
pattern of processes, 92, 99, 109; 
psychological problem of, 93 ; 
development of, 93 ff., 98 f. ; pri- 
mary, and its determinants, 94 f., 
101, 195 ; secondary, 95 ff ., 101 f . ; 
derived primary, 97 f ., 102 ; two 
or more levels of, 99 ff., 108 f . ; 
feeling in, 101 f . ; kinaesthesis in, 

101 f. ; normal to waking life, 

102 f . ; range of visual, 103 ; range 
of auditory, 103 f . ; duration of, 

104 f . ; bodily changes in secondary, 

105 f. ; 'sensory' and 'intellectual,' 
106; nervous correlate of, 106 ff., 
164, 166, 249 f. ; proposed defini- 
tions of, no; necessary to mental 
connection, 163 ff.; implies a general 
nervous disposition, 166; neces- 
sary to start of practice, 169 f. ; 
in remembrance, 190; in recollec- 
tion, 190 f. ; in imagination, 197 
ff . ; direction of, in simple reaction, 
240; levels of, in reaction experi- 
ment, 254 ; in thought, 262 ; in 
expectation, 273; in emotion and 
sentiment, 290. 

Attitudes, mental, 271 ff. ; psychologi- 
cal status of, 272, 275; in dreams, 
338. 

Attributes of sensation, 66, 67, 92; 
and types of perception, 121 ff. 

Autosuggestion, 344. 



2A 



353 



354 



Index of Subjects 



Awareness, irrelevant to psychology, 
324 ff- 

Beats, 55. 

Behaviour, as index of mind,- 12 ff. ; 
two types of animal, 203 f . 

Black, a contrast-effect, 61. 

Blend, see Fusion 

Blind, psychological world of the, 130 f. 

Brain, not the 'organ of mind,' 10; 
evidence of its correlation with 
mind, 1 1 f . ; responsible for sensa- 
tion of grey, 59; associates, 149, 
168 ; a complex and plastic machine, 
ISO. 

Brain-habit, in perception and idea, 
115 ff., 131 ; in perceptions of time, 
123 ; in perception of distance, 
129 f., 131; in perception of visual 
movement, 133 f . ; in optical illu- 
sion, 137; in direct apprehension, 
182 f . ; in memory, 185 ; in imagina- 
tion, 195. 

Catalepsy, 342 ff. 

Cataplexy, 344. 

Change, perception of, 132 f., 160. 

Chess, blindfold, 265. 

Chroma, 57. 

Coincidences, law of, 98. 

Cold, sensation of, 43 f ., 64 ; paradoxi- 
cal, 44 f. ; in sense-feelings, 82. 

Colour, sensations of, 57 ; all simple, 
57 f. ; mixture of stimuli, 57, 59 f., 
63; contrast of, 61; adaptation to, 
61, 63 ; after-images of, 62 ; 
memory-colours, 63, 75 ; in sense- 
feelings, 81. 

Colour, of tones, 54, 294. 

Colour-blindness, normal, 58, 62 ; con- 
genital, 58 f. 

Coloured hearing, 76 f. 

Comedy, 302, 305. 

Common factor, in intellectual re- 
sponses, 310 f. 

Common sense, thinks in terms of 
value, 1 ; and of self, 2, 311; its 
mixed origin, 4, 308, 311; its view 
of mind, 5 ff., 17, 321 ; of the rela- 
tion of mind to body,. 6 ff., 10 f . ; 
seeks to interpret or explain, 8, 65, 
146, 148, 202, 213, 258; its view of 
physical and psychological method, 
21 f., 39; in psychology of touch, 



48; distinguishes sensation and 
image, 73 ; rightly opposes ' plea- 
sure ' and ' pain, ' 80 ; its view of 
attention, 91, 166; of the associa- 
tion of ideas, 146 f., 203 ; of recogni- 
tion, 184; of instinct, 203, 213; 
of self, 22, 189, 308 f., 309 f., 311 f., 
315; reads ' wareness' into sensa- 
tion, 324 ff. 

Comparison, need not imply image, 
284 f . ; direct and indirect, 284 
f. ; by absolute impression, 285. 

Composite photograph, 264 ff. 

Compound reactions, 252 ff., 255. 

Concept, 270 f., 281 f. 

Conjunction, a mode of connection of 
mental processes, 159 f., 168. 

Connection, of elementary processes, 
159 f. ; of perceptions and ideas, 
three types of, 160 f. ; often involves 
feeling, 161 f., 258, 271 ; law of 
mental, 162 ff., 166 f., 168; depends 
on attention, 163, 165 ; and situa- 
tional context, 165 ff. ; is usually a 
marriage by proxy, 167, 185. 

Consciousness, two meanings of term, 
324; hence misleading, 324 ff. ; 
double, in hypnosis, 346. 

Constructive imagination, 198 ff. 

Context, the psychological equivalent 
of meaning, 118 f. ; in perception, 
114 f., 117, 121, 131, 165, 167; in 
idea, 116 f., 121, 165, 167; situa- 
tional, 166 ff. 

Contiguity, 'law' of association by, 
147, 168 f. 

Contrast, visual, 61 ; olfactory, 63. 

Convergence, sensations of, 127; con- 
vergence of associative tendencies, 
158 f., 162, 197, 199. 

Correlation, of brain and mind, 10 ff., 
17; studied by psychology, 17 f., 
113, 231; in general, replaces 
causation and interpretation, in 
work of science, 327, 331. 

Curiosity, 205 f., 301 f. 

Demonstrative gesture, 268. 

Depth, perception of, see Distance, 

perception of 
Description, the business of science, 

8, 14, 331 ; implies analysis, 17. 
Desire, 256 f. 
Differential psychology, 31 f., 309. 



Index of Subjects 



355 



Discrimination, experiments on, 254, 
283 ff. 

Distance, perception of visual, 125 
ff . ; secondary cues to, 126 f. 
kinaesthetic sensations in, 127 ff. 
role of binocular vision in, 128 
rests upon a brain-habit, 129 f., 
131 ; perception of tactual, 130 
f. ; illusion of, 135. 

Dizziness, 56, 64. 

Double consciousness, in hypnosis, 346. 

Dream, 76, 78, 336 ff. ; pattern of, 
336, 340 f. ; processes of, 336 f. ; 
nervous correlate of, 337 f., 339 f., 
341 ; origination of, 338 ; compared 
with waking state, 338 f . ; hallucina- 
tory character of, 340; not pro- 
phetic, 341 ; interpreted as wish- 
fulfilment, 341. 

Dual division, tendency to, 205 f., 

211, 276, 278. 

Duration of sensation, 66, 122 f . ; 
determinant of sense-feelings, 82 ; 
as basis of temporal perceptions, 
122 ff. ; duration of attention, 104 
f. ; of mood, 227, 255. 

Ear, organ of hearing, 51 ff., 55 f. ; 
of equilibrium, 56. 

Effort, sensation of, 46. 

Elements, mental, 15 f., 18, 90, 117; 
sensations, 65 ; simple images, 78 ; 
simple feelings, 79; meaningless, 
go ; modes of connection of, 159 f . ; 
are not awarenesses, 324 ff. 

Emotion, analysis of, 215 f . ; issues 
from a determination, 216; organic 
sensations in, 216, 218 ff., 290; 
classification of, 216 f . ; James- 
Lange theory of, 218 ff. ; expression 
of, 222 ff., 268; primary, 228; and 
instinct, 207, 211, 216, 219. 

Empathy, 198; in optical illusion, 
137 f . ; in imagination, 198, 200 ; 
instinctive tendency toward, 205 
f., 211; in emotion, 215; in hear- 
ing of tones, 284 f . ; mediated by 
sentiment, 293 ; as basis of moral 
or social sentiments, 301 ; in aesthetic 
sentiment, 302. 

Expectation, analysis of, 272 ff. 

Experiment, 22 ff.; its relation to 
observation, 22 f. ; instance of a 
psychological, 23 ff. 



Explanation, demand for, not scien- 
tific, 327; see Common sense 

Expression, of sense-feelings, 82 ff. ; 
of secondary attention, 105 f. ; of 
emotion, 222 ff., 268; of sentiment, 
291 ; intention of, in music, 135. 

Extension, sensory, 66, 124; as basis 
of spatial perception, 1 24. 

Eye, sensations from, 56 ff. ; a photo- 
graphic camera, 58; structure of 
daylight, 59; of twilight, 60; 
central blindness of twilight, 60; 
normal colour-blindness of day- 
light, 58, 62 ; adaptation of, 61 f . ; 
as organ of space-perception, 128. 

Eye-and-ear method, 236 f. 

Facial expression, 222, 223 f., 228, 274. 

Familiarity, feeling of, 178 f., 190 f., 
200; derivation of, 179, 195; lapses 
to of-course feeling, 181 f. ; makes 
an idea a memory-idea, 184; and 
feeling of validity, 279. 

Fatigue, as muscular sensation, 46, 
172; as sense-feeling, 172; not an 
index of inefficiency, 172; disadvan- 
tage of, in psychological observa- 
tion, 172; no single test of, 172 f. ; 
mental and muscular, probably the 
same, 173. 

Feeling, simple, as pleasant and un- 
pleasant, 79, 81 f., 83; relation of, 
to sensation, 79 f ., 87 f . ; method of 
observing, 80 ; opposition of, 80 f. ; 
falls under Weber's law, 81 ; ner- 
vous correlate of, 84, 86; biological 
theory of, 84 ff., 172; of familiarity, 
178 f., 190 f., 200; of of-course, 
181 f. ; in memory, 188 f. ; in con- 
nections of ideas, 161 f., 271 ; of 
strangeness, 194 f., 198 ff. ; of 
validity, 279; relational, 279; not 
necessarily a self -experience, 317, 
321 ; in dreams, 337, 341. 

Feeling-attitude, 271, 291 f. ; in 
thought, 279; variety of, 293 ff., 
300; likeness of, in different situa- 
tions, 300; in dreams, 337. 

Freemasonry of artists, 293. 

Fusion, in perception of heat, 44 f. ; 
of cutaneous and kinaesthetic quali- 
ties, 47 ; of tastes, 49 ; of smells, 
4g; of taste, touch and smell, 48, 
159; of tones, 54, 122, 159; of 



356 



Index of Subjects 



organic sensations, 64, isg; of 
feeling and sensation, 81, go, 319; 
hypothetical, of vision and kinaesthe- 
sis, in space-perception, 129; a 
mode of connection of mental pro- 
cesses, 1 59, 168; and synergy of 
brain-processes, 160. 

General factor, in intellectual response, 
310 f. 

Generalisation, nature of, 280; ex- 
periments on, 282 f. 

Genius, 198. 

Gesture, 222, 224; definition of, 268; 
language of, 267 ff. ; and origin 
of speech, 269 f. 

Grey, neutral, a brain-sensation, 59; 
physiologically mixed with all visual 
processes, 59 ff . ; the final term of 
adaptation, 61. 

Growth and decay, law of mental, 
183, 211, 233. 

Habit, 96, 99, 311; formation of, 170 
f . ; disadvantage of, in psycholog- 
ical observation, 171 f. ; pattern of 
processes in, 171 f. ; Darwin's 
principle of serviceable associated, 
223; of psychological observation, 
329 f. ; hypnotic, 348. 

Habitual images, 77 f., 265 f., 270. 

Hallucination, 76, 78, 340. 

Heat, perception of, 44 f. 

Hue, 57. 

Hunger, 64 f . 

Hypnosis, instinctive origin of, 335, 
341 ; generalised picture of, 342 ; 
symptoms of, 342 f. ; liability to, 
343 f . ; function of operator in, 344 
f . ; methods of, 344 ; therapeutic 
value of, 347 f . ; habit of, 348 ; 
relation of, to will, 343 ; change of 
perception in, 342, 348 f. 

Idea, analysis of typical, 116 f. ; made 
up of core and context, 116 f., 121, 
165, 167; meaning in, 117 ff. ; 
varying complexity of, 121; types 
of, 138 ff., 154, 166 f., 197; associa- 
tion of ideas, 145 ff . ; idea of associa- 
tionism is a meaning, 149, 162, 
163 f., 168; situational context 
of ideas, 166 ff. ; the memory- 
idea, 184 ff. ; the idea of imagina- 



tion, 194 ff.; empathic, peculiarity 
of, 198; abstract, 263 ff. 

Ideas, community of, 296. 

Ideomotor action, 243, 251. 

Illusion, perceptive, 135 ff. ; arrow 
head and feather, 136 ff . ; of mem- 
ory, 186, 188 f. ; of recognition, 
187 f. 

Image, simple, probably not dis- 
tinguishable from sensation, 73 ff., 
78, 90, 184; after-image, 62, 74, 
78; memory after-image, 74, 78; 
memory colour, 63, 75, 78; re- 
current, 75, 78; tied, 75, 78, 87; 
of later origin than sensation, 75 ; 
variable with the individual, 75 
f., 78, 138 ff., 166 f., 185; hallucina- 
tory, 76, 78, 340; dream, 76, 78, 
336 f., 340; synaesthetic, 76 f., 78; 
habitual, 77 f., 265 f., 270; free, of 
memory and imagination, 77 f., 
120, 184 ff., 195 ff. ; complex, 78, 
197 ; relative frequency of, in differ- 
ent sense-departments, 78 f . ; in 
perception and idea, 114 ff. ; and 
meaning, 120, 271; of recognition, 
184, 273 ; typical, 266, 282 ; ver- 
bal, peculiarity of, 271 ; of expec- 
tation, 273 ; of comparison, 284 f. 

Imagery, types of, 138 ff., 154, 166 f. ; 
outward signs of, 140; utility of, 
141, 195 f. ; translation of, in 
memory, 166 f., 185 f. ; stability 
of, in imagination, 195 ff. ; in 
thought, 265 f. 

Imagination, implies feeling of strange- 
ness, 194 f., 198 f., 200; idea of, 
conservative, 195 ff. ; idiosyncratic, 
197; pattern of, 197 ff. ; receptive, 
197 f . ; constructive, 198 ff . ; char- 
acterised by empathy and feeling 
of strangeness, 198, 200; and 
memory, 200; and thought, 275 
f., 279 f., 300. 

Impulsive action, analysis of, 234 f. 

Inattention, 102 f. 

Index of change, 132. 

Inhibition, nervous, in attention, 106 
ff., 164, 249 f. ; initial and terminal, 
of associative tendencies, 157 f. ; 
of instincts, 209. 

Initial inhibition, 157 f. 

Instinct, popular view of, 203 ; defini- 
tion of, 204 ; role of, in life of man, 



Index of Subjects 



357 



205, 207; list of human instincts, 
205 ff. ; biological characters of, 
208 ff . ; psychological characters of, 
210 ff. ; and reason, 203, 207, 
210, 301; and emotion, 207, 211, 
216, 219. 

Instruction, 96 f., 214; significance of, 
for action, 240 ff ., 252 ; negative, 
25°, 253. 

Intellectual attitudes, 271 f . ; analysis 
of, 274 f. 

Intellectual 'common factor,' 310 f. 

Intellectual sentiments, 297 f., 299 
f . ; and curiosity, 301. 

Intensity of sensation, 66, 67 ff . ; and 
vividness, 92 ; as determinant of 
attention, 94; does not found a 
group of intensive perceptions, 125; 
absolute impression of, 125, 285; of 
feeling, in passion, 225 f., 304; in 
classification of temperament, 227. 

Interest, acquired, 97 f., 226; in 
attention, 101 ; natural, 207, 226. 

Introspection, as method of psychology, 
22; formula of, 19, 22, 80; dif- 
ficulties of, 20 ff . ; experimental, 
23 ff. ; of feeling, 80. 

Itch, 44. 

Judgement, borrowed from social 
surroundings, 262 f., 291 f. ; ter- 
minus of thought, 276; has no 
definite pattern, 279; core of sen- 
timent, 290. 

Kinesthetic sensations, 45 ff . ; mean- 
ing of term, 46 ; blend with cutane- 
ous sensations, 47 f . ; play a large 
part in perception, 65; fall under 
Weber's law, 68, 135 ; enter into 
sense-feelings, 81 f., 319; in atten- 
tion, 101 f. ; as vehicle of meaning, 
119 f., 140; in visual perception of 
distance, 127 ff . ; empathic, in 
optical illusion, 137 f . ; imitative, in 
memory, 190 ff., 200; empathic, in 
imagination, 198 ; in motor reaction, 
241 ; in expectation, 273. 

Knowledge, problem of, foreign to 
psychology, 324 ff. 

Language, serves practical needs, 36, 
313, 321; relation of, to thought, 
266 ff . ; spoken, originally gesture, 



269 f. ; development of, 270; un- 
safe guide to psychology of senti- 
ment, 297 ; embodies a theory of 
the self, 313, 316, 321 ff. ; disadvan- 
tages of, for science, 36, 321 ff. ; 
an unreliable index of mental 
process, 323. 

Learning, 150 f., 152, 154 f. ; implies 
attention, 163 ff . ; importance of 
psychological situation for, 163 f., 
165 f. ; and mnemonics, 193 f. 

Light, sensations of, 56 f. ; all lights 
psychologically simple, 57 ; con- 
trast of, 61, 63 ; adaptation to, 61 ; 
after-images of, 62, 133 ; intensity 
of, falls under Weber's law, 68; in 
sense-feelings, 81. 

Man, inner, of common sense, 7 ; ' man 
left in,' of psychology, 9, 10 f., 17 
f., 19, 307- 

Marriage by proxy, of ideas, 166 
f., 185. 

Matter, 9. 

Meaning, not a scientific term, 4, 26, 
325 ; may be stripped from process, 
26 f. ; added to process, 27; dis- 
joined from process in time, 27 f. ; 
different, may attach to same pro- 
cess, 28 f. ; same, may attach to 
different processes, 29 ; not co variant 
with process, 29 f. ; of touch-blends, 
47 f . ; of organic complexes, 65 ; 
does not inhere in mental elements, 
90; not to be confused with sen- 
sory vividness, 93 ; of perception 
and idea, 113, 117 ff., 123, 127; 
psychologically regarded, is context, 
118 f. ; carried by kinesthesis and 
organic sensations, 119 f., 140; older 
than free image, 1 20 ; carried phys- 
iologically, 120 f., 129 f., 181, 316; 
in perceptions of time, 123; in 
perceptions of space, 123, 127, 129 
f., 133 f. ; in doctrine of associa- 
tion, 147 f., 149, 162, 163 f., 168; 
and memory-idea, 185 f., 197 ; of 
words, 150, 164, 269 f. ; in verbal 
image, 271 ; in mental attitudes, 
272 ; of self, 315, 318 f. 

Melody, perception of, 134 f. 

Memory, implies recognition, 177; 
common-sense view of memory- 
image, 1S4, 185 f. ; image need not 



358 



Index of Subjects 



appear, 184; turns upon feeling of 
familiarity, 184 f. ; idea of, does not 
copy past experience, 185 f. ; illu- 
sions of, 186, 188 f. ; pattern of, 
189 ff . ; as remembrance, 190; as 
recollection, 190 f. ; characterised 
by familiarity and imitative kin- 
asthesis, 192, 200; artificial, 192 ff.; 
and imagination, 195, 200 ; proposed 
definitions of, 201; in old age, 282. 

Memory after-image, 74, 78. 

Memory-colour, 63, 75. 

Memory-image, 77 f., 120, 184 ff. 

Mental processes, nature of, 20 f., 
90; relation of, to meaning, 26 ff., 
30, 47 f., 90; contextual, 118 f., 
241, 265, 270, 273; not reliably 
indicated by movement, 232 f., 323; 
not intrinsically self-experiences, 316 
f., 320 f. 

Method, of psychology, 18 ff.; eye- 
and-ear, 236 f. ; of trial and error, 
247 ; of reaction, 253 f. 

Mind, common-sense view of, 5 ff., 
17, 321; scientific view of, 8 f., 
307 ; relation of, to body, in common 
sense, 6 ff . ; in scientific psychology, 
10 ff., 17 f., 232 ; made up of pro- 
cesses, 20 f . ; historical differences 
in attitude toward, 38 f. 

Mnemonics, principle of, 192 ; topo- 
graphical, 193 ; number and rhythm 
in, 193; utility of, 193 f. 

Mood, 225 ff., 255, 304. 

Moral sentiments, 298 ff. ; and em- 
pathy, 301. 

Motor reaction, 239 ff. 

Movement, of head and eyes in fixa- 
tion, 62 f . ; as determinant of atten- 
tion, 94; as cue to distance, 127; 
perception of visual, 132 ff. ; of 
eyes, in optical illusion, 136 f. ; 
instinctive, 204 ff. ; expressive, 222 
ff . ; differentiates plant from animal, 
230 f. ; distinguished from action, 
231 ; unreliable index of mental 
processes, 232 f., 323; 'sensations 
of intended movement, ' 241 ; in- 
hibition of, in sleep, 340; in hypno- 
sis, 342 f. 

Muscle sense, 45 ff. 

Music, implies intent to express, 135 ; 
involves transposition, 135 ; prim- 
itive, 134 f. 



Name, personal, 313. 

Naming, first stage in process of asso- 
ciation, 160 f. 

Nausea, 64 f. 

Negative instruction, 250, 253. 

Nerve-forces, directive, 18, 96 f., 164, 
203 f., 212 ff . ; in attention, 96, 166; 
in perception and idea, 115 ff.; of 
reinforcement and inhibition, in 
attention, 106 ff., 164, 249 f. ; 
double-acting, iog, 249 f . ; in 
memory, 190; in imagination, 199 
f . ; in selective action, 248 ; in 
volitional action, 251; in thought, 
261, 274, 275, 277. 

Nervous disposition, as vehicle of 
meaning, 120 f., 129 f., 131, 133 f., 
181 f., 185, 195, 243, 274, 316. 

Nervous system, functions of, 10; 
correlated with mind, 10 ff., 17 f., 
232, 307; the 'man left in' of 
psychology, 10; as index of mind, 
13 ; Darwin's principle of direct 
action of, 223. 

Noise, sensations of, 55, 57. 

Note, musical, perception of, 122 ; 
analysis of, 159. 

Observation, as scientific method, 19, 
331; formula of, 19, 22, 80; dif- 
ficulties of, 20; and experiment, 
22 f. 

Of-course, feeling of, 181 f. 

Organic changes, in sense-feeling, 82 
ff. ; in secondary attention, 105 f. ; 
in emotion, 219 ff. 

Organic sensations, 64 f . ; their part 
in emotion, 65, 216, 218 ff., 290; 
in sense-feelings, 81 f., 319; as 
vehicle of meaning, 119 f. ; in in- 
stinct, 211,- in sentiment, 2gi ; not 
necessarily self-experiences, 318, 321. 

Origin of language, 269 f. 

Pain, sensation of, from skin, 43 ff. ; 
from underlying tissues, 46 f . ; or- 
ganic, varieties of, 64; in hunger 
and nausea, 64; may be pleasant 
or unpleasant, 79 ; see Pleasure and 
pain 

Paramnesia, 187 f. 

Passion, 226, 304. 

Pathology, as aid to psychology, 26 
ff., 46, 139, 314 f. 



Index of Subjects 



359 



Perception, analysis of typical, 114 
ff. ; made up of core and context, 
114 f., 117, I2i, 131, 165, 167; 
meaning in, 117 ff., 123, 127, 129 
ff., 133 f. ; varying complexity of, 
121; types of, 121 ff . ; qualitative, 
122; temporal, 122 ff . ; spatial, 
124 f. ; complex, 125; no class of 
intensive, 125; of distance, 125 ff . ; 
of visual movement, 132 ff. ; of 
melody, 134 f . ; illusory, 135 ff . ; 
connection of elements in, 159 f. 

Personal difference, 237. 

Personal equation, 237. 

Personalisation, tendency toward, 205, 
323- 

Personality, dual and multiple, 314 f. 

Physics, leaves man out of the world, 
8; method of, 21 f . ; early became 
experimental, 25 ; suffers from bias 
of language, 323. 

Pitch, of tones, 52; of noises, 55; 
memory of absolute, 134. 

Plants, psychology of, 13 f., 31 f., 230. 

Pleasantness and unpleasantness, the 
qualities of simple feeling, 79, 81 ; 
in memory, 188 f. 

Pleasure and pain, 79, 84 ff . ; alleged 
determinants of action, 257 f. 

Post-hypnotic suggestion, 345 f. 

Pressure, sensation of, from skin, 43 
ff. ; from muscle, 46 f. ; from joint, 
46 f. ; organic, 64; falls under 
Weber's law, 68. 

Primitive man, mind of, 303, 313; 
primitive music, 134 f. 

Problem, of psychology, 14 ff., 18, 
113, 148, 231, 258, 331; of atten- 
tion, 93; of meaning, 117 f. ; of 
action, 231 f., 258. 

Process, see Mental processes, Psy- 
choneural processes 

Psychography, 309. 

Psychologist, how concerned with 
himself, 3; not a student of human 
nature, 3 f . ; not adequate to the 
whole of his science, 3 1 . 

Psychology, the science of mind, 2, 
5; subject-matter of, as defined 
by common sense, 6 ff., 17, 34, 
321; by science, 8 f., 329; leaves 
man in the world, 9, 307 ; takes 
account of nervous system, 10 ff., 
17 f. ; of animals, 12 ff., 32, 51, 



134, 219 f., 247, 267 ; of plants, 13 f., 
31 f., 230; problem of human, 14 ff., 
18, 113, 148, 231, 326 f . ; method of, 
18 ff. ; has recently become experi- 
mental, 25 f., 34 ; scope of, 30 ff., 
329; classification of, 31 ff . ; dif- 
ferential, 31 f., 309; immaturity 
of, 25 f., 34; difficulties of, to be- 
ginner, 34 ff., 90, 112 ff., 321 ff., 
325 f . ; definitions of, 38; may have 
begun with observation of expres- 
sive movements, 222; describes a 
generalised world, 307 ; has to do 
with self, 308 f . ; has nothing to do 
with knowledge or awareness, 324 
f. ; in daily life, 329 f. ; results of, 
are useful in practice, 4 f., 33, 232, 
281, 310. 

Psychoneural processes, 164, 212. 

Psychotechnics, 33. 

Quality, of sensation, 65 f. ; as basis 
of qualitative perception, 122; of 
simple feeling, 79, 81. 

Question, as stimulus to thought, 276 
ff-, 330. 

Rapport, hypnotic, 344 f. 

Reaction experiment, history of, 236 
f., 252 ff. ; simple form of, 238; aids 
us to analyse action, 238 f., 253 ; 
compound form of, 252 ff., 255; has 
not developed in accordance with 
classification of action, 252 f . ; 
various uses of, 253 ff. ; association 
reaction, 254 f. 

Reaction method, 253 ff. 

Reaction time, 238; sensory and 
motor, 240; significance of, 242, 

254- 

Reason, 203, 207, 210, 301. 

Receptive imagination, 197 f. 

Recognition, analysis of, 177 ff. ; 
hinges on feeling of familiarity, 178, 
181, 184 f., 276; varies in definite- 
ness, 179 f. ; direct and indirect, 
180 f. ; halting and partial, 181 ; 
lapses to direct apprehension, 181 
ff . ; common-sense view of, 184; 
illusions of, 187 f. 

Recollection, 190 f. 

Recurrent images, 75, 78. 

Reflex, artificial, 244, 251 ; physiologi- 
cal, 244 f. 



3<5° 



Index of Subjects 



Reinforcement, nervous, in attention, 
106 ff., 164, 249 f. 

Relational feelings and attitudes, 279. 

Religious sentiments, 299 f., 302 f. 

Remembrance, 190. 

Repetition, as determinant of atten- 
tion, 94, 163 ; strengthens associa- 
tive tendencies, 153, 163. 

Representative gesture, 268 f. 

Resistance, perception of, 122. 

Retina, complex structure of, 58 ff., 
60, 63 ; normal colour-blindness of, 
in daylight, 58, 62; central blind- 
ness of, in twilight, 60; compared 
with olfactory membrane, 63. 

Rhythm, perception of, 123, 125, 159 
f . ; subjective, 104 ; helps to es- 
tablish associative tendencies, 153 ; 
in mnemonics, 193. 

Saturation, of colours, 57. 

Science, has no concern with values, 
1 ff., 22, 325; is no respecter of 
persons, 2 f . ; makes impersonal and 
disinterested search for facts, 2 f., 
4, 30 f., 39, 48, 275, 313, 325, 330; 
limitations of, 4, 331; physical and 
psychological, 8 f . ; describes and 
does not explain, 8, 14, 37, 91 ; 
method of, 19, 22 f. ; definitions of, 
37 ; generalises, 307 f . ; finds lan- 
guage misleading, 323; is built up 
of facts and logic, 330 f. 

Self, of common sense, 2, 22, 189, 308 f., 
309 f., 311 f., 315, 321 ff. ; concept 
of, 307 ff., 318, 321 f. ; psychological 
definition of, 308 f . ; persistence of, 
312 ff., 320; as experienced, 315 
ff. ; a meaning, 315, 318 f. 

Self -consciousness, 322 f. 

Self -experience, forms of, 316, 318 
ff. ; processes involved in, 316, 
319 ff. 

Sensation, definition of, 65, 66; attri- 
butes of, 65 f ., 67, 92 ; from skin, 
43 ff . ; from muscle, tendon, joint, 
45 ff. ; of taste and smell, 48 ff . ; 
from ear, 51 ff., 56; from eye, 56 
ff. ; from internal organs, 64 f. ; 
intensity of, 67 ff. ; relation of, to 
simple image, 73 ff. ; secondary, 
74 f. ; in perception and idea, 114 
ff. ; of accommodation and conver- 
gence, 127 f. ; no sensation of 



depth, 126, 128 f., 132; no sensation 
of visual movement, 132; of 'in- 
tended movement,' 241, 273; of 
' future occurrence, ' 273. 

Sense-feeling, blend of sensation and 
feeling, 81, 319; classification of, 
81 f., 212, 216 f. ; variety of, 82; 
opposition of, 82 ; in attention, 
101 f. ; in connections of ideas, 161 
f., 271; in recognition, 178; in 
instinct, 212; in wish and desire, 
256 f. ; uniformities of, 296. 

Sense-organs, their importance for 
psychology, 17 f . ; of skin, 43 f. ; 
of muscle, tendon, joint, 47 ; of 
taste, 49; of smell, 49 f., 63; of 
hearing, 55 f. ; of equilibrium, 56 ; 
of sight, 58 ff., 63. 

Sensorimotor action, 243, 251. 

Sensory reaction, 239 ff. 

Sentiment, nature of, 290; instances 
of, 291 ; a rare experience, 291 ; 
lapses to feeling-attitude, 292 ; 
empathy by, 293 ; and sentimen- 
tality, 295 f. ; forms of, 297 ff. ; 
runs in threes, 297; pattern of, 300; 
means of studying, 300 ff. 

Short-cuts, nervous, in perception, 
123, 127; in practice, 170; in 
action, 24s f., 252 ; in thought, 
286. 

Similarity, 'law' of association by, 
147. 

Situation, importance of the psycho- 
logical, in learning, 163 f., 165 f. ; 
attentional, 165 f., 261 ; connection 
of ideas within, 166 ; connection 
of ideas belonging to different situa- 
tions, 167 f. ; in emotion, 216, 290; 
in thought, 276 ff.; social, 298 f. ; 
religious, 299; in sentiment, 290, 
300 ff. 

Skin, sensations from, 43 ff., 47; 
borrows from underlying tissues, 45, 
47 f- 

Sleep, instinctive origin of, 335 f. ; 
walking and talking in, 336, 340. 

Smell, sensations of, 48 ff. ; blends 
of, with taste and touch, 48 ; blends 
of odorous qualities, 49 ; disused 
but not degenerate, 50 f . ; arithmetic 
by, 51; adaptation to, 51, 63; con- 
trast of, 63 ; mixture of stimuli, 63 ; 
comparison of, with sight, 63 ; in- 



Index of Subjects 



361 



tensity of, falls under Weber's 
law, 68; in sense-feelings, 81. 

Social sentiments, 298 ff. ; and em- 
pathy, 301. 

Somnambulism, 342. 

Space, psychological problem of, 124 
f. ; short-cuts to meaning of, 123, 
127; perceptions of, show conjunc- 
tion of mental processes, 159 f. 

State of consciousness, a misleading 
phrase, 21. 

Stereoscope, 128. 

Stimulus, a technical term in experi- 
mental psychology, 24; the 'biolog- 
ical ' stimuli to attention, 95, 165 ; 
'situational' stimuli, 165 f. 

Strain, sensation of, 46. 

Strangeness, feeling of, 194 f. ; deriva- 
tion of, 195 ; makes an idea into an 
idea of imagination, 195. 

Stroboscope, 133. 

Style, literary, sentiment of, 294 ff. 

Subconsciousness, definition of, 326; 
an explanatory concept, 326; un- 
necessary and dangerous, 327 f . ; 
but has proved useful in practice, 328. 

Subject-matter of psychology, 5 ff., 
113 f., 326. 

Suggestion, 213 f., 242, 252, 348 f . ; 
in volitional action, 250 f . ; hyp- 
notic, 342 f ., 348 f. ; post-hypnotic 
or terminal, 345 f . ; perceptive, 348 f . 

Syllables, meaningless, experimental 
use of, 151, 152 ff., 155, 163 f. 

Sympathy, as basis of moral or social 
sentiment, 301. 

Synesthesia, 76 f., 78. 

Synthesis, a test of analysis, 16 f. 

Taste, sensations of, 48 f. ; blend of 
sweet and salt, 49; blends of taste, 
smell, and touch, 48; in sense- 
feelings, 81; perceptions of, 122; 
and expression of emotion, 223 f. 

Temperament, 226 f., 304. 

Temperature, sensations of, 43 2. 

Tendencies, associative, 150, 327; 
studied by use of meaningless syl- 
lables, 151, 152 ; by use of meaning- 
ful material, 152, 154 f., 156 ff. ; 
conditions of their establishment, 
152 ff., 155 f., 164 f. ; decay of, 156 
f., 266 f. ; interference of, 157 f. ; 
convergence of, 158 f., 162, 197, 



199; in paramnesia, 187; and 
mnemonics, 193 f . ; and typical 
images, 266 f. ; in dreams, 338 f. 

Tendencies, determining, 212, 327; 
their relation to suggestion, 213 f. ; 
in action, 234 f ., 246 ff., 258 ; studied 
by reaction method, 253 ; in emo- 
tion, 216; in thought, 276 ff. ; 
intellectual 'common factor,' 310 
f. ; in dreams, 338 f. 

Tendencies, instinctive, to forms of 
'thing' and 'space,' 115, 124, 129, 
205, 276; to express and communi- 
cate, 135, 268; list of human, 205 
ff. ; to dual division, 205, 211, 276, 
278; in sentiment, 300 ff . ; to per- 
sonalisation, 205, 323 ; in sleep, 335. 

Tendencies, nervous, shape percep- 
tion and idea, 115 ff., 124 f. ; see 
Nerve-forces 

Terminal inhibition, 157 f. ; suggestion, 

345 f- 

Tests, mental, 310. 

Thought, general character of, 261 
f. ; true thought rare, 262 f . ; imagi- 
nal processes in, 263 ff. ; relation of 
language to, 266 ff. ; and mental 
attitudes, 271 ff.; pattern of, 275 
ff., 283, 286; relation of, to imagina- 
tion, 275 f., 279 f., 300; in dreams, 
339- 

Tickle, 44. 

Tied images, 75, 78, 87. 

Timbre, 54. 

Time, and sense-feelings, 52, 217 f. ; 
perception of, 122 f . ; short-cuts to 
meaning of, 123; in dreams, 338 f. 

Tint, 57- 

Tonality, 52, 134. 

Tones, simple and compound, 51 f., 
122; characters of, 52 f . ; funda- 
mental and overtones, 53 f., 122, 
159; colour or timbre of, 54 ; fusion 
of, 54; differential, 54 f. ; beating 
of, 55 ; in sense-feelings, 81. 

Tragedy, 302, 305. 

Traits, mental, 310. 

Trial and error, method of, 247. 

Tropism, 245. 

Utility, not the aim of science, 1, 4, 
30, 38, 325 ; nor the test of truth, 
328; but results of science are use- 
ful, 1 f., 4 f., 38, 33i- 



362 



Index of Subjects 



Value, not a scientific term, 1, 4, 22, 
30, 325. 33i- 

Vividness, of sensation, 66, g2 ; shift 
of, in attention, 91 f ., 93 ; not to be 
confused with intensity, 92 f. ; or 
with clearness of meaning, 93 ; levels 
of, in attention, 99 ff . ; inverse rela- 
tion of focal and marginal, 100, 108 
f . ; nervous correlate of, 107, 109. 

Vocality, of simple tones, 52 f. 

Volume, of tones, 52 ; perception of 
crude spatial, due to brain-habit, 
130 f. 

Warmth, sensation of, 43 ff., 64; in 
sense-feelings, 82. 



Weber's law, 67 f., 81, 135 ; usefulness 
of, 68 f. 

Will, definition of, 255; types of, 256; 
in relation to hypnosis, 343, 347. 

Wish, 256 f. ; alleged fulfilment of, in 
dreams, 341. 

Word-reaction, 254 f. 

Words, experiment on perception of, 
23 ff. ; are ingrained meanings, 150, 
164, 269 f., 316; induce secondary 
images, 186; logical order of, 
psychologically misleading, 191 ; 
danger of technical terms, 213; 
always had derivative or symbolic 
meaning, 270; relating to self, 
misleading, 322 f. 



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